#also as always nicks style kills me dead

[monathedefiant]

secret invasion wasted its potential. here are some stand out flops (mostly from the finale):

the skrodey reveal happened too soon and also just made no fucking sense. more on that here

fury doesn't develop as a character. like. At All!! he starts it the way he ends with no growth and no real acknowledgement of how his actions (or lack thereof) impacted others aside from varra. even then, as much as i love fury, what he gave her was half-assed at best and if i was her bff i'd have told her to leave him

i know the credits were ai-generated but was the storytelling also done by an ai? i'm genuinely curious

what was the point of maria's death? talos' death? again, fury doesn't grow as a person over the course of the series. so these went from being monumental moments of loss for him to just not mattering at all in the grand scheme of things

i'm cackling at the idea that secret invasion was supposed to be andor of the mcu. they fucking wish they had it like that. i'd say it's more like tbobf 2.0 but at least that show did give boba Some Development even if it was shoved into the first two episodes

the cgi fight at the end was a wholeass joke. g'iah and gravik getting all these powers and not struggling with them once was stupid. g'iah even uses mantis' powers but at no point has to deal with the blowback of being able to sense gravik's intense emotions of hatred, betrayal, and hurt. we were promised a show about intrigue and spy shit!!!! but this fight was just more of the same just with worse quality and apparently less impact on the overall storyline

domestic terrorists just going around shooting important figures in broad daylight with no problem. where was security?? they ran up on that one senator lady at the podium during a press conference and i'm supposed to believe her security detail didn't get active?? esp after the brutal murder of the news anchor by people in the exact same style of clothing????? what

i love varra as much as the next person. she's smart, persevering, competent, and gorgeous in both forms. she also wears her heart on her sleeve and is willing to practice emotional honesty. but at no point did the show ever convince me that she was a good diplomat. we don't see her doing diplomacy not once. she was unable to convince skrodey to back off of fury. her and g'iah don't talk about anything that seems to have a lasting impact on either of them. she doesn't even deal directly with gravik. speaking of which

varra introduced gravik and fury. now gravik is dead and she doesn't mention him not once when her and fury are getting ready to go negotiate with the kree. no sadness, no regret, not even a moment of silence for the young skrull she once knew.

and why is g'iah not involved in this process?? it's what her dad died hoping for: a home for the skrulls. why isn't she with them? like i get this is supposed to be a romantic thing for varra and nick but skrull lives are on the line more than ever and they're doing a pretty monumental thing without telling anyone?? *long sigh of continued frustration*

and what was the point of that one skrull that g'iah brought in, beto?? i thought he'd play a significant part in the series. when gravik killed him, i thought it'd be a turning point for the other skrulls to turn their backs on gravik. instead he slaughters a bunch of them and it's just a thing that happens. no one mentions this later on. there's no funeral. it doesn't even impact the story it happens in let alone the larger mcu narrative. like everything else in this series, it's just Something That Happens

i'm sure there are other points at which secret invasion dropped the ball. but these were the most prevalent on my mind.

this show had sooooo much potential and to watch all of it just go up in flames has been so disappointing. it's got me wondering how much time i really want to invest in future mcu shows on disney plus esp now that i'm no longer subscribed to mr mickey's little channel. like there's always

but will it be worth it??? it's looking like a no for me

[dannyphantom-justiceleauge]

I kinda wanna see a fic where a civilian, maybe retired military, accidentally kills the Joker in self-defense. Like, this man was just minding his own damn business, maybe he's new in town, & the Joker runs across him & decided to try & use him for one of his schemes so, thinking that he can take the slightly older, overweight gentleman, attacks the guy, but dudeman, like... pulls out a Glock 43 & *bang* roadkill.

However, I think the central focus of such a fic should be on the reactions of everyone else to this turn of events.

Like, no avoiding it. All tests say the body is the Joker's. There was no tampering involved. The Clown Prince is dead.

I kinda wanna see Gotham create a holiday in the civilian's name. A festival even. Legends are already being told of the galant "Bob Smith" or whatever & how he ended the clowns reign of terror once & for all. Like, absolute revelry!

Jason is just enjoying the hell out of it while Bats is sulking away at home, trying to look into Bob Smith & finding jack damnit. Other than being ex-military with 37 confirmed kills & a Concealed Carry permit (maybe a report of small town shoplifting or underage drinking/smoking once or twice, but after starting boot camp, that all dropped off the map), he was completely clean.

Just your Average Joe who happened to believe in the Second Amendment & practiced it freely.

Literally, his middle name is "Joesaia."

Besides, it'd be the biggest FU to the Joker's legacy that you could possibly imagine.

Remember episode 7 of Batman the Animated Series, Joker's Favour, where at the end, Charlie Collins pulls the wool over the Joker's eyes. The rant about how having a mediocre death was one of the Joker's greatest fears?

Like, imagine the Joker laying out on the ground, bleeding out, his body growing colder, & flashing back to that moment & slowly realizing that he was going to die. To some... Nick Nobody! That Batman was not going to save him this time because last he heard (which was not even an hour ago), the Caped Crusader was all the way on the other side of the world on some Justice Jockies mission.

Then, nothing. He dies with a deep frown on his face.

It'd be incredible!

i'm thinking of the professional goon from those redpanda tictoks as our joe normal.

and i def appreciate the joker dying to something as mundane as a citizen defending themselves. part of me want to push how mundane the death could be though. i feel like somewhere in the comics joker may have died of cancer, from them chemicals. i also just have the mental image of a stone gargoyle falling and killing him loony toons style.

i think it would be more important alternatively if there wasn't a holiday or something that big about the joker dying. in the injustice game, the joker saw the future and realized that no one remembered him or his reign of terror. that was something he was far more afraid of. less the mundane death and more, being considered mundane at all. he's a narcissist, he wants to be acknowledged as important.

so giving a day to joe normal while, probably interestesting for joe, would be giving too much power to the jokers memory in my opinion. at the end of the day he was just a shitty terrorist with a gimmick. yes there should be a memorial to his victims, yes people are relieved and will call joe normal a hero. jason will probably even shake his hand and drink a toast to him on holidays. but i'd want the joker to fade to nothing in the gotham's zeitgeist. there is always other criminals, so why should they care about the dead one once he's gone - hestia

[dastardlydandelion]

my thoughts on fear street 1666 now that i finished scrubbing all the toilets, got to go home and watch it

holy shit. that movie. wow. 

it wasn’t as fun as the other two. didn’t employ the same campy tropes. didn’t present itself in a flourish of period typical style. while i enjoyed the first two films paying homage to classic horror tropes and making the most of the stylish side of their respective environments, i am v grateful and relieved that 1666 *wasn’t* as fun as the other two and actually presented the horror of puritan fanaticism and witch accusations more srsly. imo it portrayed that grave, twisting dread that the subject matter calls for. i appreciate that bc i think i would’ve been uncomfortable if they attempted to do smth more campy with the time period given what we already knew abt the circumstances of sarah’s death even before the film. 

more of me blathering on and on abt fear street 1666 under the cut: 

the twist actually worked on me this time. they actually got me on this one, u guys. i rly watched this franchise believing sarah fier was possessing ppl and wreaking her vengeance on the town, but this whole time it was the fuckin’ goodes. nick, i never liked u, i think ur more interesting than i did before before when u were a generic as generic gets asshole, so now ur somewhat more interesting but even bigger of an asshole than i gave u credit for. ur literally the worst asshole of assholes, ur a walking infected hemorrhoidal rectum of a human being. 

don’t get me wrong, i always thought sarah was going to be portrayed sympathetically. i never doubted that. my theory was that sarah was going to be a sympathetic villain. i thought 1666 would’ve revealed why she cursed shadyside. i figured she would’ve cursed her townsfolk for turning their backs on her, maybe, or hurting/killing hannah, or using her for her witchcraft and then getting angry if it backfired on them, or smth like that. i thought we were going to watch a story abt sarah’s descent into darkness and while she’d defo be a tragic villain, she rly would be the person behind the possessions...but it wasn’t even her. she and hannah were just vulnerable to the town’s suspicion and persecution bc they were queer women who didn’t behave the way society wanted them to behave. and they were blamed for evil actually wrought by heterosexual men in power, and when sarah realized there was no way out of it, she took the blame upon herself so hannah was spared and she cursed only the goode family?? 

THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER. FUCK. THAT IS SUCH A BETTER STORY. kudos to this trilogy for being more intelligent than it ever had to be, when it could’ve just skated on the notoriety of the fear street series, the style, and billing notable cast members. 

so yeh, i defo 100% appreciated the goode men from wealthy sunnyvale being revealed as the true villains. i actually got my wish of nick getting killed in the face. i love that sarah possessed deena to do it herself!!! and deena!! oh man, i love deena so much. she was wearing a homebrew vest to protect herself made of fear street novels + duct tape, u gotta love it. ig she wanted to prepare herself since sam stabbed her at the end of 1994. on that note, she’s v active in this film for someone who has a fresh abdominal stab wound and i mean, the situation defo calls for it, but i hope she remembered to properly dress it and take a couple ibuprofen or smth. shit, i’m gettin distracted again. okay!! 

i loved errything that went down in the mall. i adore that josh and adult ziggy got more time to shine. i was so! so! happy at martin’s inclusion on the action. he deserved that after the way nick treated him in 1994. our occupations are also p similar so i defo relate to martin on that front. i loved it all the neon and blacklight stuff at the mall. that part was v stylish, that was p cool. spraying the killers with the blood so they kill each other!! yes! that was perfect!! it was incredibly practical and enjoyable for me, as a gore fan, to watch. 

i liked the sticky note on the wall at the end from deena and josh’s dad, that he had a job interview. i wonder if this is bc the curse of shadyside has been lifted with the end of the goodes?? 

yk, i feel like now knowing what we know abt the actual evil, i gotta wonder how much re-watch value there is to be gleaned from this trilogy. for example, in 1978, nick liked ziggy and didn’t want her to die. he performed cpr on her even tho she’d been stabbed a fuck ton of times and tbvh, the chances of success of resuscitation depending on what exactly it is was ziggy succumbed to seem v slim. at first i attributed this to a suspension of disbelief bc this is fiction (and to be fair crazy do happen sometimes irl, ykw, sometimes reality can surprise u) BUT now i’m sittin here like...was the cpr successful bc nick’s deal with the devil gave him the power to do that?? did his bargaining of others’ souls and offering them up for possession grant him the ability to have some control in that situation somehow? at least more than a normal human being should?? idk. it’s a thought. 

what else, what else? 

i feel like outta the three, 1666 had the most tension overall. i was p gosh darn emo abt the relationships. deena and sam’s relationship i’ve cared abt since the beginning but the contrast of them getting the opportunity to have it and be together, in parallel to the way sarah and hannah’s ended just moves u. or, it moved me at least. sarah tells hannah they’ll go somewhere and kiss in broad daylight before kissing her in almost total darkness, and then the film ends on deena and sam kissing in the sun. i was also glad deena and josh’s sibling relationship got touched on a lil bit more. thought it was cute that she tried to cook for him and produced smth that just dead ass looks inedible. i also thought it was sweet that ziggy reunited with nurse lane. she can do that now, she can leave her house without fearing the return of the curse, and she deserves it. <3

i’m impressed with the trilogy overall. each movie easily could’ve been an r-rated goosebumps episode and imo all were certainly better than that. i feel like each film was better than the previous, but personally enjoyed each one. some things were p predictable but i think much of that is intentional. 1994 and 1978 were clearly paying homage to classic slashers and familiar horror tropes. i personally didn’t find the predictability off-putting bc i recognized what they were trying to do, and felt the quality in the other elements made up for it. i was genuinely shocked by the actual villain reveal, i personally didn’t predict that. again, i always thought sarah was going to be sympathetic and i never liked nick at all, but i didn’t suspect sarah was just. dead ass *not* going to be a villain or that he was going to be the big bad. 

really dug the style of these films. loved that we got an interracial lesbian couple who made it thru the trilogy without either the predatory lesbian trope or the byg trope happening. i liked most of the characters we got to know and the only character who *rly* grated on my nerves was the villain who got stabbed in the eye. 

gosh, i want more fear street movies!! if i had to pick one outta any of the slashers featured, i’d want to see ruby lane’s story. i would like to see this production team milking the most outta the environment in the 50s, the style of the 50s, music, and whatnot. i enjoyed nurse lane even tho she was super bad at murder, so it’d be cool to see her again and who she was before her daughter got possessed and killed 7 ppl. also, ruby sings when she kills?? 

that’s weird and creepy and neat. totally down for it. 

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 16 part one

(Masterpost of All the Recaps)  (Canary’s Pinboard)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes

All righty, this one is going to be a laff riot...not. Let's do it.

The first half of this episode is like a beautifully executed standalone tragedy, while also threading together all sorts of themes and paying off all sorts of relationship building that's happened in the previous episodes. My hat is off to the writers, while I also shake a fist at them for making me cry an unreasonable amount.

We’re Sailing on a Strange Boat

The episode starts right off absolutely DESTROYING me with the Yunmeng brothers holding hands, fingers interlaced, in the first of many hand-touching moments that punctuate the episode.

Jiang Cheng has to be pretty far gone to accept this degree of comfort and tenderness. I think, from their positions, he is also holding Yanli's hand out of the camera's view. 

Zidian finally lets the trio go, and they immediately turn the boat around and head back to Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian gets the clever idea to turn the benches into makeshift oars but nobody gets the clever idea to use magic to push the boat like they do literally every other time they are in a boat. 

Their emotional need to go back to Lotus Pier is understandable, but they are being disobedient and irresponsible by doing it. Jiang Cheng is the future of the clan, and should not risk his life, particularly after his mother chose to sacrifice herself to protect him and after both of his parents told him to go hide with his sister and personal bodyguard brother. 

On the other hand, Jiang Fengmian, as clan leader, probably had a duty to go into hiding himself rather than go home to die romantically, so his authority is questionable at this point. Anyway, this is the Jiang Clan, they get to kind of do what they want, except when that pisses Jiang Cheng off.

Lotus Pier Massacre

Back at Lotus Pier, the Wens are kicking Jiang ass. The fight choreography is pretty good, taking full advantage of walkways, railings, pools, and other features of the environment. 

Using the set this way always makes fights feel more kinetic and real, as opposed to simply sparring in an open area. 

(more after the cut)

Yu Ziyuan is fighting adequately with a sword, having given her preferred weapon to her son.  She's clearly been at it for a while, and is tiring; the Wen soldiers are starting to land more and more sword blows but no critical hits yet.

Wen Zhuliu is kicking ass and possibly melting cores, although we don't see him do it to anybody yet. Later we'll hear from Jiang Cheng that he crushed the cores of his parents, but it's not clear when that happens.

Sixth young master replays Jiang Fengmian's entire archery lesson in his head while he waits, and waits, for Wen Zhuliu to finish strangling a dude the right moment to shoot an arrow at Wen Zhuliu. 

Homicidal tart Wang Lingjiao notices him lining up a shot, strolls over, and stabs him in the back while he's still thinking about what Jiang Fengmian said. One could wish that JFM's archery lessons weren't quite so wordy. 

Wang Linjao normally doesn't carry a sword because of her low spiritual power, but apparently can use one just fine when she's killing kids.

If you start feeling like this episode is unreasonably painful, just think of it as building up calluses so you can handle Yi City when the time comes.

Jiang Fengmian to the Rescue

Jiang Fengmian shows up very far past the nick of time, although he is not actually useful, so it's questionable whether arriving earlier would have helped. But his wife is glad to see him.

Netflix subtitles say that Jiang Fengmian calls Yu Ziyuan "My Lady!" which sounds courtly and romantic in English. His actual words are "San Niangzi" which hunxi-gullai breaks out here.  I might render this as "lady wife!" rather than "my lady" but I don't think English really has a perfect equivalent.

Jiang Fengmian sails across the courtyard, knocking down a few Wen soldiers and becoming a young, slender man in the process.

I mean, come on, that stunt double does not look like a boxy middle-aged man from any angle.

The Dying Bit

The episode splits up the big death scene for dramatic effect but I'm recapping it all together to keep things simple.

Within moments of arriving, Jiang Fengmian gets shanked by Wen Zhuliu like Scatman Crothers in The Shining (or Groundskeeper Willie in The Shinning).

Wen Zhuliu stops a Wen soldier from finishing JFM off, just so that a different Wen soldier can deliver the killing blow from the back, which is kinda harsh. With all this spin-fighting there is probably not an implication of cowardice when someone dies from a stab in the back, but still. Too rude, Wen Zhuliu.

Yu Ziyuan sees Jiang Fengmian fall, and after having a moment of sorrow and despair, she stabs herself in the heart, falls down, crawls to him and interlaces her hand with his. He revives just enough to give her hand a squeeze and say "San Niangzi" one last time before dying. 

She dies next, with a smile on her face at the end. The soundtrack plays that amazing "horribly emotional death scene" music that isn't one of the tracks available on the OST, argh. This same music appears at the end of Xue Yang's story.  

Of the many things I love about the Untamed, the complexity of all the minor characters is possibly my favorite. These two people suck at parenting, and suck at being married, and ultimately suck at protecting and leading their clan, making stupid, selfish choices at every step of the building conflict. 

And then they have this incredibly romantic death scene, in which they both face the inevitability of failure, and find comfort in failing together. Yet their death scene is totally in keeping with who we know them to be, and who they are to each other; the drama doesn't cheat by making them ideal lovers or great people at the end. But they have a great, great moment.

Jiang Yanli, waiting in the woods while her brothers are presumably running toward Lotus Pier, drops her lotus pendant, which is made of the loudest jade ever discovered, and it breaks with a crash.  

Yanli, who is a well educated young lady, knows a moment of doomy symbolism when she sees it.

Jiang Yanli: Who put a giant rock out here in the woods? What are the odds I’d drop my pendant directly on it? 

It’s all Over Except for the Crying, Running and Choking

The brothers climb up on the roof and are shocked to see nothing but Wen soldiers and piled up Jiang corpses... 

...including one child who is either about to become a zombie or who is being played by a young actor who can't control their curiosity, judging by the way this eye is sneakily opened while the camera is running.

There's a moment where Jiang Cheng is saying they must have spared his parents, they must be okay, where Wei Wuxian's face is just...wow. You can see right here the gulf in life experience between these two. 

Wen Zhuliu roams around looking troubled while searching for more people to kill. He’s an interesting villain; someone who believes his loyalty to his boss makes him a good guy, but knows his boss is a bad guy. 

Then we are treated to a hell of a camera move, where it tracks over Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian together on the floor, heroic in death and still holding hands, and then sweeps up to show their killers sitting on the lotus throne. 

The dead couple were at odds for their whole lives together, while the evil people who killed them are acting like devoted lovebirds. It's a stunning shot and a terrific thematic contrast. When Wei Wuxian eventually comes to take his vengeance, he will spend some time turning Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao against each other, before ending them. 

The camera shows us JC's reaction, then shows his mother, then WWX’s reaction, then JF; each reacting to the death of the person who loved them. Some folks may feel that Jiang Fengmian actually did love Jiang Cheng but was just bad at showing it. But Jiang Cheng doesn't think so, and I don't think it's a given that parents love their children.

Side note: Macroexpression king Wang Zhuocheng is able to open his eyes so far that a giant strip of white shows above his irises, and keep them like that, which is quite a trick. Try it yourself.

Meanwhile Wang Lingjiao and Wen Chao gossip about YZY and JFM's bad marriage. Wen Chao admires YZY's beauty, and Wang Lingjiao insults her character, and announces that she's going to stab YZY's body a few extra times. Jiang Cheng briefly faints at this, taking a page from Wei Wuxian's book, and rolls off the roof. 

Run Run Away

Both young men run, and run, and run away from Lotus Pier while Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao mistreat the bodies of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan 

The stabbing happens off camera, because it's ok to stab a live child on camera, but not a dead adult. (As always, there are cultural reasons for "what's ok" in any country, and I'm not saying anybody's wrong about these choices). 

Wen Chao follows this up with pouring a cup of wine across their faces. He does this in the style of a libation for the dead, but as a desecration, combining mistreatment of bodies with profaning a ceremonial rite. In a world where ghosts are real and have sharp fingernails, this is deeply, deeply stupid.

Yu Ziyuan’s actress Zhang Jingtong is able to have liquid poured INTO HER EAR without flinching. Mad props.

The brothers eventually finish running and arrive in a field with an extreme purple photo filter on it. Which I've done my best to remove for these gifs, with variable results. 

Jiang Cheng wants to turn around and go back to Lotus Pier. He says he wants to retrieve his parents’ bodies and to take revenge, but he's devastated and it seems likely he just wants to die with everyone else.  

Wei Wuxian pleads with Jiang Cheng to calm down and stay safe, while Jiang Cheng gives himself over to anger and shock as the brothers shout at each other.

Punching and running ensues, and Wei Wuxian tries to hold his brother back, grabbing him around the shoulders him in a gesture that painfully echoes the many hugs he's given over the years. 

This time Jiang Cheng doesn't just push him off. He turns around and chokes his brother for nearly a full minute, while screaming at him and blaming him. 

Just as when Madame Yu beat him, Wei Wuxian doesn't fight back; he pulls on Jiang Cheng's wrists but doesn't hit him or try to break his hold.

Finally Jiang Cheng lets him go, and cries out for everyone he's lost, while Wei Wuxian weeps silently next to him. Eventually they fall asleep in the grass together, their bodies curled up in the form of a heart. 

Damn, this episode really brings it.

Side Note: during their argument, Wei Wuxian says, among other things, that "revenge is a dish best served cold," according to subtitles. It's a French saying from the 1800s so it's probably not precisely what Wei Wuxian is saying. More importantly, as a longtime Star Trek fan I can't help but hear James Kirk yelling "KHAN!!!!!" whenever I encounter that phrase.

There’s Got To Be A Morning After

When they wake up in the morning, Jiang Cheng is still in his feelings, but now his feelings have moved along to despair, from anger.

I feel bad for noticing how handsome they both look in this scene. Let's all feel bad about this together.

Jiang Cheng is free to have this level of emotional breakdown because Wei Wuxian is there keeping his own shit together and focusing on what matters.

When Jiang Cheng refuses to get up, Wei Wuxian reminds him, very, very gently, that they have a sister, who has waited all night to know what happened.

At this, Jiang Cheng gets up, but won't look at Wei Wuxian, continuing to blame him for everybody else's actions, as he walks onward to find Yanli.

Wei Wuxian follows, hurt and bereft, as he gets to work internalizing everything that he's being accused of. This is good practice for his future as a widely reviled bogeyman.

Part two will be slightly less awful! Coming soon!

[derekmorganscrocs]

Last Summer: Ace x Reader (OneShot)

Here’s an adorable Ace gif for you because I love him.

Word Count: 2, 064

Summary: You and Ace are best friends but it turns into something more.

Quick Note: This is the first thing I’ve written that I’ve fully finished and am posting so I’m like freakin our right now. Also this isn’t my usual style but I’m super happy with how it turned out and I hope you (anyone who reads this) likes it! I’m considering a series but I also have several other things in the works, so it might not be soon. Anyways, let’s get this show on the road!

Ace and Y/n. Best friends since they could walk. Inseparable through elementary, middle, and high school. Where do we start?

To be honest, there’s not a lot to explain. You and Ace kind of just... were. It made sense. Best friends, always had the other’s back. You both work at the Claw, you’re both a little burnt out and worn down, but still clever and funny. Everything always made sense.

You always joke, laugh, and do stupid shit together. You’ve bailed him out of trouble more times than you can count. He’s done the same for you. He’s your favourite person, you’re his.

And you’ve been in love with each other forever. Except neither one of you can tell that the other loves you back. So we’re at a roadblock.

You got weird when Ace dated Laura back in the day.

Ace got weird when you dated James, the biker dude in high school.

You got weird when Ace started crushing on Bess.

Ace got weird when you mentioned that Ryan Hudson was hot in a douchebag kind of way.

Summer was different though. Had you known it’d be your last summer before you spotted Dead Lucy, saw Tiffany Hudson’s ghost, were introduced to the spirit world, and started doing seances and rituals every other day, you may have appreciated it more. But oh well, right?

Not right. The start of summer was when you started realizing you couldn’t go on the way you were, but that you also couldn’t live without Ace. So how do you confess? You don’t.

A couple weeks go by before you start to notice the way Ace looks at you, how he always stands just a little closer than anyone else does. How he puts himself between you and the guys that ogle you as the two of you walk to the pier. The way his jaw clenches when someone cute hits on you. His hand always right beside yours, and you wonder if he gets the urge to grab your hand like you do his.

And by the end of June, you’re this weird something. Not just friends, you’ve both seen the way the other stares. But it’s unspoken. You don’t know if you can bring yourself to tell him. He doesn’t know if he can bear the risk of losing you.

Don’t get it twisted, despite the buried feelings you and Ace are the best pair of best friends anyone in Horseshoe Bay has ever seen. Constantly laughing and cracking jokes, seeing who can get more tips in a day. Ace is always the one you turn to, you’re the one Ace turns to. For pretty much anything.

When July rolls around, you both get more time off. The fourth comes quickly, and you make plans to watch the fireworks from the roof of the claw. Upon climbing up at sunset, you decide to just hang out for a few hours until it’s actually time for the fireworks. You talk and joke, and you and Ace carve your initials into one of the shingles. Laying against the shingles, he only carves an A, and you ask if you’ll ever find out what his last name is.

“Maybe when you take it.”

Those are the five words that change everything. He looks up from his knife, startled at his own words. You’re frozen in place as the sky finally reaches its full darkness. And the first boom grabs your attention. You look over in the direction of the beach, and see red sparkles in the sky. Turning back, Ace is sitting up now, both of you still shell-shocked at his joke. Was it a joke?

His knife is long gone, tucked safely in his pocket, and he grabs your face and kisses you. You kiss him back, obviously. He kisses you passionately, slowly but strongly, and fireworks erupt. Both metaphorically and literally. You both end up laying side by side on the roof, kissing and watching the fireworks. It’s the best night ever.

But it’s never made official. There’s still no blurted out confessions, and it never happens again. His eyes still dart to your lips when you speak to him, you still imagine his arms around your waist, and you both still stare longingly at the other whenever their back is turned.

Until August rolls around, a month filled with storms and fog. And death. Ryan Hudson and his goons pull up for dinner. You and Ace serve them when all the others bail, make jokes about insufferable rich people and stare at each other’s mouths, both trying to not get caught as you wish you could just have what you want.

Then the lights go out. Screaming outside from Nancy, and Tiffany Hudson is dead. You and Ace are pretty much free to go, alibis confirmed. The next day Nancy comes to you with evidence that Tiffany Hudson was killed by Lucy Sable. Dead Lucy. Oh god.

The case unfolds and you’re wrapped up in a supernatural mystery. All the while trying to figure out your very natural mystery. What the hell is going on between you and Ace? It’s normal but not, and you don’t want to lose him, but you can feel the drift starting. It’s so uncertain. For once in your life, nothing makes sense.

You cover well though. Burying your feelings is a lot easier than it should be, and you and Ace still joke and pull stupid shit all the time. George and Bess are tired of being caught in the crossfire of your pranks, Nancy would be, but the only time she’s actually noticed anything is when you shot her with a nerf gun because Ace dodged. Nick, the guy from the garage, makes his way into your crew, and takes immense amusement from you and Ace. It’s fine. Great, even.

Then in September, after Tiffany Hudson’s funeral, you go to the Claw to talk to Ace. But he’s beyond talking. He’s got his tongue in Laura Tandy’s throat. And you knew she was back in town, hell, that’s what pushed you to finally talk to Ace. Only you’re too late. You’ve wasted the summer, your summer, being afraid of losing him. Just to lose him anyways.

So you spend a miserable month pretending you’re fine and fake gagging every time him and Laura have their backs turned on you. You bitch to Bess, who’s all too keen on the drama. Nancy’s so wrapped up in the paranormal and her own love life that she’s barely bothered to notice that you’re drowning. George on the other hand... she’s supportive. Well as supportive as George can be. Mostly threatening Laura and saying she’ll fire Ace if you want her to. But you can’t do that. He may only be a dishwasher at the Claw, but he loves it. He loves being part of the team.

And then you walk in on Laura asking Ace to go to Paris with her. You nearly lose it, but manage to keep it together, hiding around the corner with a hand clamped over your mouth as tears threaten to finally spill free. When they’re out of sight, you call Bess, then George, then Nancy, all to no avail. And so you’re hyperventilating and alone, sitting on the front porch of the Claw when Nick swoops in to save you.

Of course it was Nick. The only one who doesn’t know about the whole mess with Ace. So he makes you explain and watches in horror as you refuse to let tears fall and successfully convince yourself to just not be sad. Over the next few days he turns into a brotherly figure, managing to help you realize that feelings are okay to have.

So the garage is your new hangout, and you don’t realize that Ace is actually missing you. Because the only one he wants to ask about going to France was you. Nick sends you back to work on the fourth day, you don’t want to go but he forces you. He says ‘mixing shitty Caesars is the best remedy for any amount of pain.’ It’s the first time he’d seen you laugh in a while. Actually, the first time you’d laughed in a while.

The first person you see when you walk in the diner, of course, was Ace. Sitting at the bar, staring into the wall’s soul. You manage a quiet ‘hey’, and when he turns to see you looking mostly back to normal, he nearly tackles you into a hug. He manages to restrain himself though, not sure what to do. You two never fight. Is this even a fight? How do you make up from a not-fight-fight? Instead he asks you to sit with him. You do, reluctantly, but only because he insists and you can never say no to him.

“Say the word and I’ll stay. Say you want me here and I won’t go.”

And there he goes, changing everything again. You freeze, just like on the Fourth of July, and stare at him in shock. This time though, he isn’t surprised, it’s just you who’s shell-shocked. It takes you a while to understand that he is actually saying what he’s saying, and you kind of just stare at him for a minute. Then you make your decision.

“I can’t tell you what to do. You need to make this call on your own.”

And then, you mix Caesars. And more Caesars, and more Caesars. The restaurant could be supplied for a week if it weren’t a festival day. You would’ve kept going, but what’s left in the bottom of the vodka bottle looked pretty delicious, so you down it instead. Still mostly sober, but tipsy enough to manage a smile, you patted George on the back and said goodbye before heading to the garage.

Nick makes you crash on his couch in the loft, and after a power nap and a glass of water you’re back to completely sober. Good as new. The only thing that’s missing is... your phone. You left it at the Claw earlier. Which means you have to go back. And probably see Ace again.

So back you go. You get the phone without running into anyone, but pause at the sound of voices in the dining area. Frozen in the kitchen, you watch as Ace tells Laura he’s staying. That he has a ‘purpose here. And a person.’ She tells him to miss her, which gives you mixed vibes, and leaves.

“Ace?”

“Jesus! Oh, Y/n! You’re-you’re here. Oh that’s great, you saw that. How much did you hear?”

“That you have a purpose here. And a person.”

A smile finally appears on your lips, and he reciprocates. You walk into the dining room, toward Ace. He watches your every move intently, as if he’s entranced with you. He is, because he hasn’t seen you smile since Laura came to town. And even though he’s been playing it happy, he’s been miserable. He loves Laura, he really does, but it’s more of the ‘maybe in another world’ kind of relationship.

You and Ace. That’s the ‘perfectly perfect, made for each other, soulmates, in any world’ type of relationship. Best friends to something more, with ups and down. Real. Not some whisk you off to Paris and live in a movie. Horseshoe Bay’s ugly, scary, haunted, real life.

Sitting on a barstool, back to the kitchen, you lean against the bar and look at Ace. You think about what to say. There’s so many things you could do. That you want to do.

Slap him.

Kiss him.

Throw him off the roof.

Hug him until he has to peel you off of him.

Throw a bottle at his head.

Jump into his arms, wrap your legs around his waist and stay there forever.

Stick Lucy on him to suck out his soul.

Kiss him until you run out of air.

Maybe you’ll say something instead. There’s lots of things you could say, but you’re not sure how many of them are true.

Did he really betray you by seeing Laura?

Are you grateful for this because you met Nick and gained a brother?

What would’ve happened if Laura never showed?

Are we still us?

Instead, you decide to go with something you know is the truth.

“I’m your person.”

And he smiles like he’s won the lottery.

Tags: @vexfulfun

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 82-86

LIKE A BLOODY STORM

Atsuku LIKE A BLOODY STONE

So it’s come to this.   This is the “Black Onyx” arc and “Sorcerian Part 1″, where we finally get the payoff to the Major’s 55-year plot against Alucard.    Walter betrayed Integra, the Hellsing Organization, and the whole United Kingdom just so Millennium would give him a chance to beat Alucard, and he’s failing.   Alucard doesn’t see any point in dragging this out, so he’s sucking up all the fresh blood in London to power up and bring and end to this.   Also, if you’re just joining us, Alucard looks like a 14-year-old girl.    Just roll with it.

But the Major was counting on Alucard doing this, and apparently his plan to “poison the tyrant’s wine” involves his last henchman, Warrant Officer Schrodinger, cutting off his own head and adding his werewolf blood to Alucard’s meal.   Why would this matter at all?

Walter seems to understand, because he begs the Major to stop this, as if the Major could.

Desperate, he bisects Alucard with his wires, but it’s already too late for that.   Part of the secret behind Alucard’s invincibility is that he gains a 1-up for each person’s blood he consumes.   That’s what Anderson and Walter were banking on when they attacked Alucard before.   At the time, he had separated himself from the souls he had consumed, which meant that killing him once -- however tough that might be-- would finish him off.   But now it’s too late for that.  You kill him now and he’ll just come back and dare you to keep going.    And he’s taken the blood of like three million people at least.

So the Major observes that Walter’s window of opportunity has closed.   According to him, there’s only been two chances to beat Alucard in a fight since Abraham van Helsing captured him in 1898.   I assume he’s referring to Anderson and Walter’s respective efforts. 

No, Walter was never the final stroke in the Major’s plan, just part of the endgame.  All of Millennium’s resources were sacrificed to get to this moment.  Enrico Maxwell’s 9th Crusade?   The Major was counting on them getting involved, which is probably why he leaked and shared so much of his plans with the Vatican, even though his target was always London.   He wanted the Vatican to send all their best warriors to compound the horror, all so Alucard would use his full power to destroy them.

And then, once Alucard’s full power was deployed, the Major knew Anderson would step in and use everything at his disposal to kill Alucard.   This battle destroyed all of Alucard’s familiars, setting him up for Walter to take a turn.   And maybe Alucard could beat Walter without taking in more blood, but that;s never been Alucard’s style.   He sees himself as a loaded weapon at the disposal of Integra Hellsing.   He’s not going to drag things out for no reason, and Integra ordered him to destroy Walter, not humor him.

And maybe Walter was aware of all this, but he still believed he could buck the odds and kill Alucard before the Major’s winning move.  Walter’s a rook who fancied himself a king.   I guess that’s always been his problem.   This was never Walter’s story, and I guess he couldn’t handle that truth.  If he couldn’t be the hero, then he was content with being the villain, but in the end he was never more than a plot device, supporting whichever side he was on at the time.

And finally, it happens, whatever ‘it’ is.   Alucard somehow hears the Major saying that he’s lost.   Is the Major saying it?  I don’t think anyone else would be.  Whoever it is, he starts flashing back to all the other times he’s heard that.

Then he seems to realize something’s gone terribly wrong, and he pauses to notice the rising sun, which has been a common theme with all of his past defeats.   Then all these eyes appear on his body and begin winking out, one by one.  

Okay, so what the hell happened here?  Well, get comfortable, because this is going to take some time to unpack.

The key to all of this is Warrant Officer Schrodinger, a werewolf with the power to be “everywhere and nowhere”.   This sounds like he’s just a teleporter, like Nightcrawler from the X-Men, or.... Majik from the X-Men.    Well, it’s more complicated than that. 

Let me explain the “Schrödinger's cat” thought experiment, because that’s one of those things that’s widespread enough in pop culture that it’s easy to take for granted.  I think people understand it has to do with an imaginary cat being alive or dead, but that’s about all.   

The really short version of quantum mechanics is that subatomic particles don’t behave the same way as big objects like apples or planets or people.   It’s convenient to think of atoms as tiny little solar systems, with electrons orbiting the atomic nucleus.   But the reality is that electrons don’t revolve around elliptical orbits like the Earth around the Sun.   What happens instead is the electron zips around the nucleus all over the place, from all angles and directions.   What’s more, the electron can be at any particular spot at any moment.    So it’s less useful to think of an electron having an orbit around a nucleus.   What you have instead is this region where the electron is most likely to be at any particular moment.    And you can do the math and figure out what the shape of this region is.  You can’t locate the electron’s exact position at any particular moment, but you can consider the region where it’s most likely to be in an atom, which will resemble a sphere or a vaguely dumbbell kind of shape.  

This is what the Schrödinger Equation is for.   Erwin Schrödinger didn’t just talk about cats all day.   He postulated his equation in 1925 to work out the movements of electrons in atoms.   It was groundbreaking work, and he won a Nobel Prize for it in 1933, and don’t feel bad if you have trouble wrapping your head around all of this.   I’m a professional chemist and a lot of this is over my head. 

The point of the “Schrödinger's cat” concept was to help visualize how confusing quantum mechanics really is.   There are principles to subatomic particles that we know to be true, but they make no sense in our macroscale world.   For example, a particle might have a probability of being in multiple locations at a given moment.    It can only be in one place at a time, but until you actually perform the measurement to find out, it may as well be in all of those locations.    This is something called “superposition”, and I guess we could say that this idea is the basis for our wolfboy’s powers.

So Schrödinger (the scientist, not the furry) suggested a thought experiment where a macroscale event could depend upon a subatomic condition.   Like there’s some subatomic thing that could happen or not happen, and depending on the outcome, it would cause a poison to be dispensed that would kill a cat in a box.   If the particle goes one way, the cat dies, but if it goes the other way, the cat survives.    But both probabilities are equal, and supposedly both outcomes are true for the particle until you make the observation.    Therefore, you can’t know whether the cat lived or died until you open the box to look!   Indeed, according to quantum mechanics, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box to see for yourself.  

How does that make any sense?   Well it doesn’t, and that’s the point Erwin Schrödinger was driving at.    In our large scale, things like gravity and being one place at a time are things we take for granted.  But on the quantum level, subatomic particles are governed by rules that seem completely paradoxical to us.    And yet, we’re not talking about some alternate reality here.   Those subatomic particles make up the atoms that make up us.  Cats, boxes, bottles of poison, they’re all just a huge pile of subatomic particles, each following these seemingly nonsensical rules.    They’re just organized in such a way that they give rise to bigger rules that make more sense to us.    Things like classical mechanics, chemical reactions, cats liking to be inside boxes, and so on.   As Erwin Schrödinger put it:

“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naïvely accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”

In other words, we see the world as discrete outcomes.  We read the black letters on the page, and not the indeterminate spaces in between, or the hazy, unfinished thoughts of the writer.  That doesn’t mean the words on the page aren’t legitimate, or that the passing thoughts of the writer don’t exist.   We have to accept the seeming contradiction of it.   

So what does this have to do with Alucard?   Well, Schrödinger (the furry, not the scientist) has the ability to be like one of these subatomic particles.   Our were-boy probably can’t be literally everywhere, but he has this probability region of places where he can be, and it seems to cover at least half the world.   He’s appeared in Brazil, London, Zorin Blitz’s psychic visions, and so on.  He’s been shot twice in this story, but he just reappears like nothing happened to him at all.   It’s not like he teleported away in the nick of time, either.    We’ve seen his head burst open like a ripe melon.   Like Schrödinger’s cat in the thought experiment, he can be alive or dead at any given moment, so killing him doesn’t actually matter.  Warrant Officer Schrödinger can do all of this and he’s conscious of this ability.   So as long as he’s aware of himself, he can observe himself and direct himself to be in any location he so chooses. 

I would think getting shot in the face would interfere with this ability to control his power, but that’s probably where his werewolf nature comes in.   Like the Captain, he can grow back from a nasty headwound, so that gives him time to picture himself someplace else, and in better health.   Now that I think about it, that must have been a silver knife he used to cut his own head off.  

So when Alucard drank all that blood, he drank Schrödinger’s too, and just like when he drank Rip van Winkle’s blood and got the power to fire that magic musket, Alucard absorbed Schrödinger’s ability to be “everywhere and nowhere”.  Except that power only works when Schrödinger himself is conscious of it. And he’s not conscious of it anymore because he’s part of Alucard now.  Alucard might figure out how to control this power, but until he does, he can’t choose a location and be in that one place.   Instead, he’s “everywhere and nowhere” all the time.  So he’s experiencing all of his past moments simultaneously, with no control over his current position.  

That sounds bad, right?  Well it gets worse.   He drank all those other dead people’s blood too, so on top of his own perception, he has the perceptions of all 3 million plus of the souls he’s consumed.   So that just further complicates matters.   The bottom line is that Schrödinger’s ability is fundamentally incompatible with Alucard’s existence as a composite being made up of multiple absorbed lives. 

And since Alucard can’t just cough up Schrödinger’s blood, it’s too late now.   He’s got Schrödinger’s ability and he’s stuck with it, but he can’t control it, which means he just winks out of existence.   As the Major puts it, he’s now neither live nor dead nor undead.   He’s become like a series of imaginary numbers.  You’ll need to look that one up on your own time, folks, I spent enough time talking about quantum mechanics.

And you have to hand it to Kouta Hirano, this is a really clever way to bring down an overpowered seinen manga protagonist.  This whole time, all of these lower villains acted like they could just beat down Alucard if they applied enough brute force, but that was never going to get the job done.   For the purposes of this story, Alucard has been, almost by definition, unbeatable.   So the Major’s solution was to give him a new power, one that he would be unable to control.   It wouldn’t kill him, but killing Alucard seems like a fool’s errand anyway.  Instead, it just... makes Alucard go away, which is probably as close to destroying him as anyone could ever hope for.   He might still be alive in some semantic sense, but he can’t carry out his duties to Hellsing and the Crown, so the Major seems to have at least brought down what Alucard is expected to be. 

And there’s no way to stop it, because it’s already happened.  Integra commands him to stay, but it’s useless.  I like the way he signs off in the dub of the OVA, where he apologizes to Integra and says this is one order he cannot obey.  It’s just out of his hands.  

Then he vanishes, and all that’s left of Alucard is a bloody mark on the street, shaped like the Hellsing insignia on his gloves.   

Wait, so does this affect Seras too, since she was Alucard’s servant vampire?  Remember, way back in Chapter 1, Integra said that killing the head vampire would automatically kill any ghouls or vampires he creates.   So maybe Seras is gone too?

Hell naw.    Seras joins Integra in the Major’s command center, and she looks like she’s ready for some revenge.  Does she know what’s just happened?  I mean, she was furious at the Major to begin with, but she sensed Alucard’s return a while back when he floated up the Thames River.  Surely she sensed her own vampire dad winking out of existence.

Meanwhile, Walter had a front-row seat for Alucard’s disappearance.   At first he laughs with triumph.   I guess he must be giddy with relief, since he wanted to kill Alucard, and for a minute there it looked like Alucard had him dead to rights.   Imagine a guy’s about to murder you and then he just ceases to exist.   But it doesn’t take long for Walter to realize how hollow this all is.  He wanted to kill Alucard himself, and he bet everything just to get that one opportunity, and now he’s failed and he’ll never get another chance.   His body is giving out and he’s betrayed everyone who ever cared about him and he’s got nothing to show for it.   

Then Heinkel starts shooting at him with a sniper rifle.  Yeah, she never left the battlefield after Walter killed Yumiko.   The Captain stopped her from interfering before, but the Captain’s dead now and I guess she figures she’s got nothing to lose by trying again.   And I suppose the sniper act proves she’s learned from Yumiko’s fatal mistake.   Attacking Walter up close is dangerous.   

At first, Walter seems to invite this.   He even invites Heinkel to shoot him a few more times, as it’s a fitting punishment for a traitor.   If you’ve only seen the TFS Abridged version of Hellsing, they actually use this as Walter’s death scene, but in the original version Walter takes a few bullets and then leaves.  He says Heinkel can shoot him, but she doesn’t get to kill him.   I don’t think she even heard him say that, but whatever.

Instead, he uses his wires to board the Major’s airship one last time.

So remember how the Major was protected from Integra by a reinforced glass barrier?   Yeah, well Seras finds an 88mm cannon and shoots through it.   It also shoots through the hull of his ship and rings a large bell on the outskirts of town.   Right before she shoots, Integra orders Seras to “Search and Destroy” just like she always told Alucard.    It’s kind of sad, but Seras has automatically succeeded her master as Integra’s weapon.  I mean, it’s a triumph for Seras, but it comes at a heavy price for her.   She’s probably too enraged by what’s happened to appreciate this moment on all these other levels, but there’ll be time for that.

So there’s no way the Major could survive a cannon like that at pointblank range, right?   Wrong, the dude’s a fucking cyborg, and I guess Seras’ aim was a little off.   I suppose the downside to using big-ass guns is that you have trouble aiming at small targets.   Wait, no, what happened to all that “third eye” stuff from before?   What’s wrong with you, Victoria?  

Oh wait, she missed because she’s sad.    Aw... :`(

So we knew the Major had to be something to have survived this long without aging, but we had already learned he wasn’t a vampire.   He insists that he is still human, however, no different from a man with a pacemaker or an artificial limb.   His mind remains his own, even if it should be a brain in a life support system or backed up on a computer.   I’m not sure if either of these describes the status of the Major’s brain, but to his point, it doesn’t really matter.  He describes himself as Alucard’s polar opposite.  While Al is this beautiful monster who masquerades as a human, the Major is a human who resembles the grotesque form of a monster.   I’m not body-shaming the dude, I’m just reporting what he’s saying.  He’s taken a few fat jokes in stride, and I guess he’s got the same attitude about his cyborg body too.  He doesn’t seem to care if others find this unpleasant, because it’s better than being a vampire with a diluted self.

Arguably, this whole campaign to destroy Alucard was the Major’s effort to prove his claim on being human.   Alucard often said that only a human could defeat a monster like him, and the Major beat him, so doesn’t that prove he’s a human in the end?  

So Integra whips out her other gun, the one she didn’t use to shoot at the Major’s glass case, and they start shooting each other at pointblank range.   The Major’s a terrible shot, though, and yet somehow he manages to take out one of Integra’s eyes before she puts a bullet in his forehead.   I still don’t understand how you can shoot someone in the eye and not kill them.   Did the bullet just angle away from her brain or is the Major’s gun just really weak on stopping power?  

Anyway, Integra’s shot kills the Major, but not right away, so I guess it’s not just his original brain in there.   He’s just thrilled to have finally hit something after a lifetime of terrible marksmanship.    It’s a fitting reflection of his win over Alucard, because he and the rest of Millennium were warriors who had never won a war before.   In the end, I’m not sure the Major would have been disappointed if his plan had failed.   He’d never won before, so I don’t think another defeat would have bothered him much.    As it is, he dies contentedly, satisfied with his “good war”.   What a shithead.

So yeah, we’ve got three more chapters to go and then we’re done.   See you next time.

[queenrose730]

Reckless

The Winter Solider 

Master List

2014

It had been a while since you had been back to the Avengers tower. Once SHIELD got all official after the Battle of New York, they got a big fancy building in DC. You decided to keep an apartment at the tower but honestly spent most of your time now in DC. Now though, you had been forced back by Steve. All because of a broken leg. It didn’t even happen on a mission, although that might have been better. You were sparing with another agent when a mistake happened and your left leg was broken. Steve nearly took the guys head off when he heard you scream. Somehow between the pain you got Steve to focus on you. After all it wasn’t the others guy’s fault.

The doctors put you in a cast and told you to use the crutches for at least 3 months. Then they would reevaluate the leg. Steve caught you once without your crutches and set you back to New York. It forced you to take your job slower and you couldn’t do as much. Plus, Tony and Bruce kept an eye on you. After a week there, Tony broke down and figured out how to make an exoskeleton cast. This way you could get around more easily and hopefully complain less. After some trial and error, and the ok from the doctor, you had a brace. It came up around your thigh and had a plate that slid under your foot. The knee joint move freely but the ankle was locked, but could be loosened as you healed.

“Well it looks like your leg is pretty well healed agent.” It was almost three months to the day.

“Thank god.”

“I would still recommend the brace for another month but the ankle can be set to move freely.”

“Awesome. I’ll get Tony to do that.” The doctor at the tower was so much nicer than at SHIELD. Probably because they were ex-military docs. They somehow always were dicks.

“I’ll want to see you again in a month. But other than that you are free to go.” You hopped of the bed and shook the doctors hand.

“Thanks again. I appreciate you working with me.”

“You didn’t give me much of a choice.” He raised an eyebrow. To which you just shrugged your shoulders and headed out. The doctor just laughed as you walked out the door.

“Hey Jarvis. Let Tony know I’m on my way down!” It took all you had not to skip down the hall.

“Certainly Miss yln.”

As you reached the elevator you grabbed your phone to let Steve know how your leg was and maybe drop the hint about getting back to your regular work. Before you could type your message, number came up on your screen.

“Speak of the devil! I was just about to text you. I got the all clear from the doc.”

“That’s good yn.” His voices sounded off.

“What’s wrong Steve? How’d the mission go?”

“It was complicated.” He let out a sigh over the phone.

“How complicated?” Suddenly the conversation was serious. You changed the floor you were headed to, now going to your apartment.

“What do you know about something call Project Insight?”

“I’ve never heard of it.” The door to the elevator opened and you walked down the hall.

“Fury showed it to me. I need you to see if you can find anything out about it. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Sure. Hang on a sec while I get my computer up and running.” You sat down at your desk. Setting the phone down and putting Steve on speaker. If something did sit right with him, it was trouble. You learned quick to trust Steve gut.

“Alright let’s see what I can find.” A quick search of shield records didn’t provide much.

“All I can see is that there is a file under that name but it pretty high clearance. Like Fury and a few others. What is it?” You kept click through files that you could open while listening to Steve.

“He’s got three helicarriers. At armed to the nines. He said it’s a way to neutralize threats before they happen.”

“What? So shield is building their own nuclear deterrent? How is Fury ok with that?”

“I don’t know. Can you see anything else?”

“No Steve. Not without hacking in and they would know it was me. I doubt even the people working on it know what they are building.”

“Ok. Well I’m going to have to do some more digging around here.”

“I can come down there Steve. My leg is fine.”

“No yn. Just stay there. Keep digging though files and see what you can find.”

“Ok. Be careful Steve.”

“You too sweetheart.”

You spent the rest of the night combing through any file you could get your hands on. Tony came up sometime after dinner. He was going to yell at you for not eating or coming down to have him loosen your brace. But changed his mind when he saw the mess around you on the desk. Instead he went back and grabbed you a plate. Pulling you away for only a moment so you could eat and he could take care of the brace.

“So how bad is it kiddo?”

“I don’t know Tony. The more I dig the more inaccuracies I find in all kinds of files.” You stared at the computer twirling your fork. “I think I might head down to DC.”

“Well I’ll get a jet ready for you. It’ll be on standby.” He stood from his seat and walked to the door. “And what is it the Rogers always tell you? He gave another pause and you turned to him. That’s right! Don’t do anything stupid of reckless yn.” With that he was out the door.

You took one more look at the computer before standing up and heading to the bed. If shit was about to hit the fan you at least need to get some rest.

Apparently you needed more than you thought. It was almost 8am when you finally woke up. You decided against breakfast for the moment. You checked for phone for any messages then hit the shower. After your shower, you started to pack your bag. A change of regular clothes along with your tac suit. Some toiletries and a few extras. Lastly was the fun stuff. In the hall Closet was your own mini armory. You pack your usual two pistols and a few blades. You also grabbed a couple auto injectors. Can never be to safe. While you were packing though you missed the alert on your computer. Something big was happening.

“Miss yn. You jet is ready for takeoff.”

“Thank you Jarvis.” You walked to the door and laced up your boots.

“There was also an alert that came up on your computer miss.”

“What?” You stood up and headed to your desk. Leaving your bag by the door.

Sure enough there was an alert. Nick Fury was dead and Steve was wanted by Shield.

“What the fuck!” You nearly topped your chair when you stood. Instantly grabbing for your phone to call Steve. There was no answer. Shit. Shit. Shit. You grabbed you bag and ran to the jet. Shit was hitting the fan. A lot of shit.

“Jarvis let Tony know I’m leaving.”

“Certainly.”

You flicked through your takeoff procedures and grabbed the controls.

“Jarvis try Steve again.” You shot up into the sky heading to DC.

“I’m sorry miss. He did not answer.”

“Fuck. Try Maria.” She was always close to fury. Hopefully she would know what the hell was going on.

“Hill.”

“Maria. What the fuck is going on?”

“Yn.” She paused. It sounded like she was taking to someone.

“I’m on my way to DC. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“Yn. I’m sending you Coordinates to land at. Do not enter DC air space.” Fuck. This was bad.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you when. You get here. Just get here.” She hung up. You pushed the engines to max speed.

You made it to the coordinates Maria gave you in almost record time. 20 minutes from her hanging up to when you touched down outside an old dam. Maria was out waiting for you.

“Tell me what the fuck is going on!” By the time you landed you were fuming. Not at anyone particularly but at the whole situation. “What happened to Fury? Where is Steve?”

“Come on in yn.” She turned to lead you into the damn. All you wanted to do was cuss and scream at her nonchalant attitude towards everything. You followed her down the damp hallways of the dam until it opened up into a small room.

“I could hear you cursing from in here yn.”

“Fury! What the fuck” He held back a laugh. “SHIELD said you were dead. How?”

“They needed to think he was actually dead but we got him out of the hospital and here for treatment.” Maria moved around the bed and started talking to one of the doctors. You took a seat next to fury.

“What is going on?”

“Shield has been compromised.”

“By who?”

“HYDRA.”

“Project insight is them.” You sat back in your seat. That would explain all the odd bits of info you had been picking up while digging through files. Fury nodded at your response. “How long?”

“I’m not sure. At this point we don’t know who to trust.”

“So why I am here? Why did you let me know you’re alive?”

“Because other than Captain Rogers, you would be the second person in line to kill anyone that might be affiliated with HYDRA.” He wasn’t wrong.

“So where is Steve now? What’s are next play?”

“Hill is working on how to get Steve. Then we stop Insight.”

Sitting around was not your style, but Fury told you to wait. Maria was on trying to track down Steve. Doctors where still working on patching up fury. All you could do was sit and wait. You knew that if Steve was running he would have ditched his cell. At this point it really wasn’t safe to call anyone else. Fury didn’t even want you call Nat. You only slipped a call to Tony to let him know you landed. He tried to press for more info but you shut him down quickly. You could hear the news playing in the background about Fury and Steve.

It was well into the night when Maria finally found something. A STRIKE team had been sent to a mall then Camp Lehigh was bombed. There was still no indication where Steve was at.

Then around mid-morning the next day more alerts started going off. Sitwell was kidnapped.

“That has to be Steve right?” You had taken up a post with Maria going through any SHIELD alerts.

“It’s a good chance. Keep digging.”

“God I should have come down here when he called me the other night.”

“There’s nothing you could have done. You would just be on the run with him.” Maria looked up at you over her computer. “And do you think Steve would want you out there or here?” You caught the smirk on her face.

“Yea yea.” You waved her off. Steve did just about anything to keep you safe. He learned quickly that your self-preservation was about as good as his.

“This is it!” She stood up quickly and spun her computer around. A STRIKE team orders to grab them on the freeway. They were helping out “the asset”.  “If I can get into one of those prisoner transports, I can get them out.” Before you could respond she was off to Fury.

“Take the team and get him.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned and started ordering the men around.

“I’m coming with you Maria.”

“No you’re not yn. I need you here.” It was an order from Fury.

“Fine.” You just watched as Maria and her team suited up.  

“I don’t what you doing anything stupid out there yn.”

“I know Fury. I know.” He was right. The likelihood you would do something stupid was pretty high. All you could do now is wait.

  The plan was easy enough. Steve, Sam and you each had a chip to place into the helicarriers. Linking them and taking them out of the air. Nat and Fury would take down SHIELD. Exposing everything to the world. Steve was on edge even though he didn’t show it.

“I want you to get on and off that helicarrier quick. Don’t mess around.”

“Steve I’m fine. If it’s about the leg, it’s ok.”

“Yn. It won’t take much for you to rebreak it.”

“Yep. And it doesn’t take much to break my other bones either.” You teased and jogged off to your starting point.

“Yn I’m serious.” He said over comms. You just laughed to yourself and continued on.

The guys gave you a head start. You listened to Steve talk over the intercom. People that you passed looking nervously between each other. Once you reached you carrier, it was mostly unguarded for the moment. Steve drawing the attention away from it for the moment. Just a few bad guys to take down. Suddenly the door above the carrier began to open.

“Uh, guys they are getting ready to launch.”

“Get that chip in place and get back to Maria yn.” You rolled your eyes at Steve even though he couldn’t see you.

You pushed harder to get to the control center to get your chip in place. Thankfully it seemed most people hadn’t quite realized you were already on the ship. Outside you could see that Sam and Steve were drawing the most attention.

“I got my chip in place. How are you guys doing?” Getting out was going to be a bit more difficult.

“I’m locked.” Sam shouted.

“Two down. Captain how are you looking?” Maria was running the ground.

“Working on it.”

“Steve where are you? I’m coming to you.” You started working your way to the flight deck.

“Yn get back to Maria. I got this.”

“Oh fuck you Steve.”  You heard Sam laugh.

“I like her.” That earned a groan from Steve.

“Since you like me so much want to give a lift Sam?” You kept working your way to the deck. First plan was to grab a jet and head to Steve. You just had to get up there.

“6 minutes until it reached altitude.”

“Sam! Where is that ride!”

“I’m grounded. Steve’s on the carrier.”

“What happened!”

“Winter Solider.”

“Shit.” You pushed off from where you were hiding. Steve told you that somehow that was Bucky. That whatever happened to him when he was captured during the war must have helped him survive the fall. You knew Steve would be blinded by his friend. Even if he didn’t recognize him.

“Steve you copy? I’m on my way.” No response.

“Falcon. I got Rumlow.” Maria broke in.

“I’m on it.”

“Maria can you get into one of these jets and get it started for me?” You kept clearing a path.

“Space five. Staring engines now.” The jet just ahead of you roared to life and the hatch opened.

“I could kiss you girl!” You climbed in and headed to the last carrier.

By the time you reached the control center Steve and the Solider were already locked. You took aim and started firing at the Solider. It caused just enough distraction for him that Steve was able to lock him in a hold.

“Yn.” He hissed over the comms.

“Just get me that chip Steve!” Steve shoved the Solider off of him and started toward you. Climbing up the structure.

“Steve!” The Solider was back up an aiming at Steve. He tossed the chip at you. You barely got your fingers on it, leaning every part of your body over the railing. A shot rang out.

“Go yn!” Steve kept climbing as you rushed to the computer. More shots were fired. This time they hit you. First in your leg.

“Yn!”

“I got it Steve!”

“One minute!” Maria shouted over comms. This was it you just had to reach- Another shot. It hits you in the shoulder propelling you forward. You slam into the control center. Pressing the keys as fast as you could the door slid open. Just as you reached to put your chip in another shot hit your stomach. You fell before you could get the chip placed.

“Damnit.” Steve had reached you. He grabbed the chip from you and slammed it home. “We’re locked.”

“Get out of there guys.”

Steve reached down to scoop you up when he was shot in the shoulder.

“Maria. Fire.”

“Yn.” Maria questioned you.

“I said fire!” You shouted. Steve didn’t have words to say. Suddenly there was an explosion.

“Why?”

“Steve.” You gave him a sad look. He dug in you suit to find an injector. Quickly stabbing it into your arm.

“That was stupid.”

“So is this.” You pushed him off of you. “Where is the Solider?” Steve looked around. When he stopped you followed his eye line. The Solider was trapped under a large piece of metal from the carrier. “Go.”

Steve looked back to you.

“Go Steve.” You reached into your pocket and grabbed another injector. Slamming that one into your thigh. Steve nodded.

“Here.” He handed you the shield. The carrier started to tip. A quick glance saw that it was colliding with the building.

“Stupid and reckless.” You gave him a grin then stood the best you could. At the railing you gave a look down. There was a break in the glass directly below you and water beyond that.

“Get your friend Steve.” Before he could question you, you heaved yourself over the railing and out the bottom of the ship.

You used the shield to help break the water as you hit it. It still nearly took all the air out of you. Once you bobbed back to the surface you looked back up. The building seemed to have caught the carrier and it just sat there. The extra injector gave you enough strength to slowly swim to the edge of the water.

“Where’s Steve and yn!” Your comms still worked!

“I’m in the water under the ship! I’m trying to get to shore. Steve’s still on the carrier.”

“I’ll get a vehicle and get her Fury.”

“Copy that Hill.”

You just have to get to the edge before that carrier comes down. Pushing your muscles as they ached. The pain meds quickly wearing off even with the extra dose. You glanced back. Shit. The carrier was coming down. You didn’t know if you were clear but you hoped you were. Maybe the wave it caused would give you the extra push to the shore.

Tags- @ginger-swag-rapunzel

[tcm]

A Conversation with Patty McCormack on Growing Up on Screen By Kim Luperi

Not many child stars go on to enjoy long, successful careers in show business – and fewer still have earned a prestigious Academy Award nomination before they turned 18. Patty McCormack has achieved both. The actress, who made her first film appearance in 1951 and went on to star in THE BAD SEED (’56, for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the murderous Rhoda at age 11); THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (’60) and THE YOUNG RUNAWAYS (’68), continues to work in Hollywood and shows no indication of slowing down.

I had the pleasure of speaking with McCormack recently about some of these titles and more, including the delightful film KATHY O’ ('58) in which she plays a famous child star – an apt springboard for a discussion about growing up on screen and transitioning into more mature roles over her incredibly long, accomplished career.   

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

I was watching KATHY O’ last night, and I really enjoyed it. In that movie they talk about your blonde pigtail braids as a trademark, and I realized it kind of was; you had that hairstyle in THE BAD SEED and ALL MINE TO GIVE (’57), too. Do you know how that style came about, or was it something you did that caught on?

Patty McCormack: It seems to be! I believe I even had them early on in Mama, which was an old live TV show that was a weekly event. I don't know how that [trademark] happened. I think it just happened because of THE BAD SEED – I think it was the hairdo that I went in with or they just decided on. When you see the original artwork on William March’s book, there’s a very long face drawing of Rhoda, his Rhoda, and there were braids in it. I don't know if they were looped or what, but that could have been it – or I honestly don't remember if it was chosen by my mom because it was easy, but it stuck!

I loved KATHY O’ because I got to live the dream. I loved the notion of them cutting my hair off – except it was a wig that they cut. After a while it felt like I didn't want to look like an older person with braids – you have to get rid of them eventually. As soon as I could, I wanted hair that was like, in that era, a page boy or something like that, where it landed on your shoulder. But I carried that long hair for a long time. And then you know how you revert back to certain hairdos years later? 

They come back in style.

PM: Yes, they come back, but now I have shortish hair, and I'm growing it one length. So I got over the braids – just in the nick of time!

Circling back to Rhoda, you originated the role on Broadway before the film version, so you obviously had a lot of practice and familiarity with the part before you took it to the screen. Since she's such a chilling character, how did you get into that mindset at age nine, especially when you had to play the part multiple times a week?

PM: I always go back to the source, and the source was the director, Reginald Denham. He was so good with directing me. He made it fun, because I learned when I'd get an audience reaction on a face I’d make or something, I'd look forward to doing that again – you know, that kind of joy.

He made it so clear and simple, and his point of view was that Rhoda was always right. I know I've said this before, but it's the truth. No matter what anybody says, Rhoda is correct, and anything she wants, she feels entitled to – not using that word ‘entitled’ – but I really wasn't thinking of myself as a bad person, or especially not a murderer. I just thought it was their fault, which is classic, I guess. I had to kill him [the little boy] because he was so mean. So I think that was how I learned to be that character. I was aware of the murders – people were dead because of me, that I knew – but somehow it wasn't disturbing to my mind. If you take a look at it knowing that, you see it. I'm not coming from some sort of evil place, I don't think.

You were nominated for an Oscar for THE BAD SEED, which is amazing; it's a true testament to your talents, of course, but it’s also such a big accolade to have at such a young age. Do you remember there being any pressure on you for your next role?

PM: Well, the role was so odd for a kid to be so noticed, in that era anyway. I can't think of any jobs I didn't get after that that somebody else got, you know? What happened, though, was that each year I grew, and so I just experienced the typical kid actor dilemma which is going from category to category and establishing yourself in that category and learning how to be in that category. I did do something on Playhouse 90 – I did a few PLAYHOUSE 90s back then – and I did a lot of television –

You played Helen Keller [in the original 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay “The Miracle Worker”].

PM: That's what I was going to say! That was after THE BAD SEED. But mostly, as far as movies went, there was KATHY O’ and a few here and there and at different levels of development. I was always aware that it had been a while since I worked, that I felt, but I didn't think business, like “What will I follow up that with?” I didn't have that kind of mentality, and I really don't think my mother did either, so it just sort of went the way it went.

As you mentioned too, you were still growing up. So, you’re a child, then a teenager, then young adult. You probably wouldn’t be thinking about the business part of it. 

PM: No, it's so strange. It's not an easy transition, and as you know famous people go through really hard things. You don't get to sit and relax in a certain mode for too long because before you know it you're in the next one. And then you go through your ‘ugly period’ in front of everybody, which is horrible.

The movie that you mentioned TCM is going to air, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, when I see the headshots from that I just think, “Aw, I looked uncomfortable!” I could see it even in my body. I felt like I was at the awkward time – you know, part of me was getting bigger, developing – and that hairdo they gave me didn't help; it was still the braids but wrapped up.

I want to ask you about that transition. Did you find anything difficult or surprising about navigating Hollywood and growing up on screen? 

PM: The most difficult part, honestly, as a person growing up – I think at the time I always say Sandra Dee was the person we all looked to. She was just so beautiful, and no one else looked like that – maybe Carol Lynley a little bit – but the bar was set very high. With that, you’re insecure anyways because you’re at that age, and more than anything you don't want to be different. I think that's true for a lot of kids. So the maturing, that part of development, was difficult when I look back. You don't have the confidence that you had as a little kid when you don't think about anything. You become all self-conscious about how you look, if you're thin enough, if you’re pretty enough, if your hair looks nice. It's a little bit of an adjustment to get through all that and go back to what you like to do, which is to pretend, and take the focus off what you look like or who you look like or any of that stuff. I don't know if other kid actors had the same experience, but usually people grow out of a look that made them known – most of us anyway, not all of us. 

I know when you left Hollywood you went back to Brooklyn and finished high school there. What was that experience like for you?

PM: Well, I took my real name back, and I was going to the high school that my mother and older sister went to, so I was really excited. This is going to sound so weird, but it was almost like playing a part – I was playing the part of a high school student. My real name is Russo, so I was Patty Russo. The experience was really kind of shocking, because I think they expected me to be very conceited, and so I had to hide in the cafeteria in the early days, because it was Brooklyn and they were pretty tough – they were on me! But I made a best friend who helped me navigate through it, and it turned into a nice experience finally. I was glad to have had that.

Then I came back out here [Los Angeles], and I stayed with a friend of my mother's family for a while. I wound up leaving Utrecht [her Brooklyn high school] – it’s a long story – but I did a soap opera in between while I was going to Utrecht, and that was kind of tricky because they weren't flexible like California was. In California they were used to kid actors, and in New York at that time, they really weren't. Then when I came out here, I went back to finish high school at Hollywood Professional and got my diploma that way. But I'm so glad I got to go back to Brooklyn. I'm pleased about that.

It sounds like you had a pretty grounded childhood, especially in attending a regular high school. Do you think that helped how you adjusted when you returned to the film industry?

PM: It was a little bit too grounded, I think! I came from a really good family. I never thought that I was a big deal, and they [her mom and dad] made sure of that. So, coming back to the industry after, I really didn't know the ropes. People handled all that before – the only thing I knew was what I did, and so some things maybe didn't get handled so well, but I learned on my feet when I came back out here. Then I married my childhood boyfriend and we had our children, and I kept working.

Yes, you’ve worked steadily since then.

PM: I did work a lot! It’s true. Nothing on the level of nominations, but I was a journeyman, I like to say.

You've spent six decades in the industry, which is really astounding, especially since you started as a child. I read an interview from 1974 that featured a humorous quote from you that I’d like to share. You said that you lamented that you never got the guy in movies and just once you wanted to “kiss the guys instead of kill them.”

PM: That is funny!

But throughout your career, you played Helen Keller, you played a career woman in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (’70), you played Pat Nixon more recently in FROST/NIXON (’08), so you've had a lot of experience with different characters. Was there any genre or any type of character that you wish you could explore further?

PM: Well, I'll tell you the truth, it's actually seven decades from when I started, although if you want to make me younger, I don't mind! At this point in time, I'm so grateful when I work, because there could be nothing now, you know? I do enjoy what comes along. The only thing I never got to do, which I would have loved, was to have been in a habit – I would have loved to have played a nun in a habit.

That’s interesting.

PM: Isn’t it? It’s the Catholic school thing.

We’ll have to find you a role like that!

PM: I know, wouldn't that be fun? And it would be a nice way, in your later years, to go from a killer to a nun, you know? I think it would be a good idea.

Going in the right direction!

PM: Yes! But anyways, little things change here and there, and I sometimes do voiceovers, and I did something recently that I had never done, which was so much fun. Did you notice on Netflix a show called ARSENE LUPIN [working title for LUPIN]?

I haven’t heard of it, but I know there’s an old movie with the same name.

PM: Yes, this is a remake. It's in French, and I dubbed a French woman into English, and it was so much fun to do, to have someone else's face up there. I know some people watch foreign movies and they say, “Oh it's so unfair to dub the other actors,” and I probably wouldn't love it if somebody dubbed me either, but I had such a ball doing it. So, if you catch that show, you'll see somewhere in there I'm speaking English for a French woman.  

I wanted to talk about two of your more recent roles. I know you starred in MOMMY in the 1990s, kind of a grown-up Rhoda, and you played a psychiatrist in the Lifetime remake of THE BAD SEED in 2018. This story has been filmed a few times; what do you think resonates with people, and how did it feel going back to that character and story but from different perspectives?

PM: Right. Well, to be honest, the Rob Lowe production [for Lifetime] was really a totally different story. There was no mom – he was the mom character – so the writing was really different.

There were two MOMMY movies: MOMMY (’95) and MOMMY’S DAY (’97). Those were written by a writer who lives in Muscatine, Iowa: Max Allan Collins. This is a long time ago now, but it was fun to grow her up, you know, physically. I talked to you about how that is the strange thing about transitioning, and it was so enjoyable to do that. It really was a journey for me internally.

There was also something about shaking hands with that, because in my day, it was never a good thing to have something so long ago be talked about all the time. I got that impression by other people's opinions, not my own, and as time went on, the world changed and people started knowing actors’ work from 20 years ago. So, the appreciation for that old work came back, and I learned to feel good about it through other people's feelings about it. I do have such a different perspective on it now, and it's a character that was so special. That really changed my ability as to how I could hold it [the role].

It’s nice to be able to do that.

PM: Yes, it is. 

I have one more question for you. I know we’re in a pandemic and many productions are halted, but do you have any upcoming appearances that I can share with fans to look out for? 

PM: Aw, I wish! It's funny, I did some Hallmark Christmas movies. Well, I did one, and then last year I was supposed to do another one, and they cut our parts because of COVID. So, I'm rooting for [the next one], and I have a good feeling, you know, when we have our vaccinations. Also, a downside was that they shoot in Canada, and they have to bring you up there, and at that time you had to stay in 14 days.

A lot of rules!

PM: Yes, a lot of rules. So hopefully there will be a new one. I can't honestly say, but there's no reason there shouldn't be!

My dad loves the Hallmark Christmas movies, and I watch a lot of them because of him, so I'll be rooting for you and looking out for you!

PM: I know, there's so many. People have blankets and all these things! There are real hard-core fans – it's amazing.

[nycorix]

I made this ghost/22 playlist on a whim after reading Archivist Wasp/Latchkey for the first time, and I haven’t been able to stop making playlists for this fandom since 😂 

I like to curate my playlists into stories/character deep dives, so all of them are ordered and I have specific thoughts about each song! I’ve posted some of my playlists on Twitter already, but this feels like a good place to put those specific thoughts lmao so here goes Title: Carrion Boy Description: A ghost/22 playlist that’s got songs for both his timelines, all mixed up and shaken together just like him oops

1. Roll Call [the neighbourhood] 22's whole existence while living 2. Falling Off [the people's thieves] The ghost's whole existence since dying 3. I'm So Sorry [nico collins] 22 @ The Director/Latchkey 4. Bullet [riot child] 06/22's uhhh unique relationship with both each other and their circumstances 5. Say You Believe [midnight divide] 22's (platonic!!!!) strong feelings for Kit 6. 1x1 [bring me the horizon, nova twin] The ghost's misery strong platonic feelings regarding Foster's memory loss 7. Blue (Da Ba Dee) [jonathan young, toxic eternity, travis carte] This song is as chaotic as he feels to me, flawless external calm and grace but always internally screaming 8. No Mercy [zayde wølf] …….22. It's just 22/ghost's fighting style (especially when fighting 06 lmao) 9. Solo [prismo] 22 honestly thinks he's so hardcore (he's not wrong but also. Drama king much) 10. Where The Lonely Ones Roam [digital daggers] Kit @ 22, Ghost @ Foster. This one gives me chills ngl 11. When Dragons Cry [bo johnson] 22&06's requiem for the latchkey ghosts 12. Stampede [alexander jean, lindsey stirling] For this one I'm literally just picturing 06/22 wasting a bunch of mechs/ghosts/whatever, specifically That One Scene in Firebreak/AW flashback where they destroy the mechs and look appallingly cool doing it 13. City of the Dead [eurielle] The ghost in the ghost-place 14. Kill the Lights [the birthday massacre] He has such intense self-hatred/repression/bitterness and this song represents All That 15. In the End [linkin park] This is literally what happened to 06 and his feelings about it

16. Hurts Like Hell [fleurie, tommee profitt] This song perfectly captures his grief and his way of dealing (lol) with it 17. Neon Ocean [new dialogue] ...his grief/PTSD, continued 18. Sometimes [nick lutsko] 22 and 06 in Latchkey once they're the last ones left 19. Darkside [sam tinnesz] The ghost considering his life/death/etc. 20. Now That We’re Alone [the people’s thieves] 22/the ghost’s mental landscape (y i k e s) 21. Pompeii [bastille] "Oh, where do we begin? The rubble or our sins" i meAN 22. March [jesse abbey] The whole supersoldier thing doesn't really leave you in death, turns out 23. Wolves [selena gomez, marshmello] the ghost's tragic journey to find Foster 24. Man or a Monster [sam tinnesz, zayde wølf] 22′s not great at self-concept and It Shows 25. Centuries [fall out boy] 22's opinions on Latchkey and the director's ghost 26. Stronger [the score] 22 in life at all times/the ghost, upon realizing he's a ghost lmao 27. Be Free [the tech thieves] 22 and 06's yearning for freedom while in Latchkey 28. Echoes [fenris] Everything he was and everything he is, blending together 29. UNHOLY [the faceplants] 22/ghost's bittersweet manifesto lol. I strongly picture this playing over the scene where he snaps at the end of Firebreak and [redacted] everybody on sublevel A 30. Wrecked [imagine dragons] This is the ghost without Foster. 31. Forget [marina] His relationship with memory is Complicated 32. Monster in the Closet [subcon] ….22/ghost's bittersweet manifesto pt. 2. This is like a giant ‘fuck you’ @ the Director/Stellaxis/etc. 

[wisewastelandandnotsowisesimp]

Hakuoki Ramblings (Part 2.5?)

hello. so i wanted to do a sorta character analysis thing (it's probably gonna read out more like a 'reasons why i love X and they have a place in my brain) and so i decided to do a seperate, spe-shal post for this. and who better than mah boi okita?

from the moment he first appeared on my screen and said those infamous first lines, he took away my breath (and my sanity, and the top spot on my ultimate husbando list. but i digress). even now, my love for okita is strong as always (even iba isn't enough, like he's great and all, but i feel like i like him because of the potential he had as opposed to his actual character).

the other okita souji I've seen (who is also based on the real life figure, albeit loosely) is the Okita Sougo of Gintama. in the show (which is hard to slug through but it's pre good, i'd recommend to watch), okita is seen as a sadistic swordsman who has his insane moments and a rivalry with hijikata, the "demonic vice-commander". the reason why i note this is because there are quite a lot of similarities between the two.

the thing with hijikata-> throughout both series, okita pokes fun at hijikata. in hakuoki, this manifests in the form of banter whereas in gintama, the "poking fun" is brought up to a whole 'nother level as okita (repeatedly, and unsuccessfully) tries to kill hijikata. either way, it provides a form of entertainment and in the case of hakuoki , provides some lightheartedness to the gravity of the game (can't say for the anime, cuz i haven't watched it). favourite, memorable, moments include:

the ishida medicinal powder thing

THE HAIKUS

when okita points out that chizuru was assigned to be an attendent to hijikata and okita is told to shut it (memory is a little iffy on that part, it was chapter 1-something)

(still can't format the fooking thing, i lied, i can't do it but this is numero 2) the sadistic side. in the game, okita's sadistic side is not so much sadistic in verbal terms as it is just bloodthirsty, self-depravating (in some instances) comments. same with his killing style, i feel (note: has been a very very long while since i completed this man's route so could be inaccurate) that he's not the sorta person that would slowly torture and kill someone (unless pushed over the edge which he is pre close to, admittedly) but rather would go with one slice/stab and get high in the rush of life.

the light brown hair (apologies, i forgot most of my arguments because I'm coming back to this after weeks. was supposed to end the year with this and now its march. )

snarky comments. a lot of snarky comments.

(oh god i want to play hakuoki again, it's been too long. but life. but hot anime men. will get back to this one.) here are just some hakuoki specific ones.

abs. (ik a lot of characters have shirtless cgs. i haven't seen okita's yet so i can't say ive seen them per se but he's a hot anime warrior dude- he has some)

the fact that he based his hairstyle on kondou (KYAAAA)

this is long enough as is tbh, and my brain hurts from too much science. but hey, i am able to proclaim my love for a psychotic-warrior-dude-based-on-a-now-dead-guy which kinda weirded me out when i first thought of it this way because then the question remains, do i simp for a dead guy or a reinterpretation of him? in that case, could i say that i am truly a devotee for the mans? (at the same time, i know people simp over irl serial criminals and george michael)

in the end, i will not pull a nick gatsby and wait for a long time for what was simply attraction to ideals to be reciprocated at all. although i suppose i am less pitiful, in that i am aware that it will never happen. now please excuse me as i still continue to stare into that green light and bask in the temporary happiness it may provide me

[violetwolfraven]

Ghost Guitar Battle (2/3)

((Part 2 of I have no impulse control and squirreled on this random idea, ignoring those asks in my inbox. Don’t @ me this concept is fuckin awesome if only to me.))

Part 1 here.

Part 3 here.

Warnings: mentions of mind control.

...

12 days ago

“You what?”

Julie was pretty sure she was hallucinating, because this was something she had honestly never expected to happen.

Sure, there were days when she missed this certain ex-friend, but she’d never expected her to actually let go of her ego long enough for something like this to happen.

Carrie sighed before repeating herself, “I need your help.”

“Oh, we heard you,” Flynn said, “We’re just trying to think of reasons why we would ever help you with anything.”

“This doesn’t concern you, Flynn.”

“It concerns Julie, so it concerns me. Why would either of us ever help you with anything?”

“Because I’m not asking for myself,” Carrie snapped, “It’s about Nick.”

...what?

Nick and Carrie had broken up weeks ago. Why would she be asking for help involving him?

“What’s up with Nick?” Julie asked.

Simultaneously, Flynn laughed out, “We’re not helping you get him back.”

“It’s not about getting him back,” she insisted, “He’s acting weird. Like, really weird. And no matter what’s gone down between us recently, I’m worried about him.”

“Have you tried talking to him about this?” Julie asked, honestly unsure what was going on.

“No, because...” Carrie made a frustrated huff, “Because have you been paying attention to him at all recently? It’s like he’s a completely different person.”

By the look Flynn was getting in her eyes, it was starting to dawn on her that Carrie was being serious about this.

Julie, for one, still wasn’t sure what to think. Truthfully, she hadn’t been paying much attention to Nick lately. She’d been pretty preoccupied with the band, with the guys now able to give hugs and stuff and be seen whenever directly touching her. Plus, there was the new weirdness of figuring out if she and Luke wanted to try out some form of dating. Honestly, that uncertainty was creeping into their songwriting, which they’d still been doing a lot of.

In short, she’d been pretty busy.

Nick had been hovering around but barely starting a real conversation lately, which was weird now that she was thinking about it, but... was that just awkwardness left over from when Julie rejected him?

“How do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

“Well for one thing, he’s actually talking to me,” Carrie explained, “Which he really hasn’t done since the breakup at all. And for another, all he does is ask about you.”

Flynn rolled her eyes, “This is weird how?”

Carrie glared at her, “It’s weird because mostly, he keeps asking if I’m mad about Julie and the Phantoms upstaging Dirty Candi. Bringing up the fact that it happened twice, as if I’m supposed to hold some kind of major grudge.”

“Okay, that’s weird,” Julie admitted.

“You don’t know the half of it. As if that’s not suspicious enough, he asked if I found your band members suspicious. Like, sure, I knew you’d only hurt him cause you’ve got a crush on your guitarist, but—“

“What?!”

“Oh honey, it’s obvious,” Flynn admitted.

Julie really, really hoped it wasn’t and Flynn and Carrie just knew because they’d known her for a long time.

“Whatever,” Carrie said strategically, “Getting back on topic, what really tipped me off is... he asked about my dad. He asked how much I knew about his past, about bands he was in before he made it big, or whatever.”

Okay, that was a big red flag, Julie had to admit. Rule #1 of being friends with Carrie had always been to make sure she knew you weren’t in it because of her dad’s fame. Bringing up Trevor at all as anything other than a dad was off limits, and would have been even more so to Nick.

If he was acting that off, Julie felt a bit guilty for not noticing.

“Look, I don’t know what’s up with him,” Carrie admitted, “But I know something is. Besides just what he’s been talking about with me, he’s been playing jazz in music class. He carries himself differently when he walks. And if nothing else, have you both seriously not noticed how much not like himself he’s been dressing the last couple days? Nick doesn’t wear that many dark colors except for dance performances.”

Wait... there was something familiar in that description.

Reggie had done a good enough impression, according to the others, that Julie and Flynn had a good idea of the style of a certain dark color-wearing, jazz-loving ghost.

A ghost with magical powers they didn’t really know the limits of.

Flynn was clearly thinking the same thing, so there was only one last decision to make.

Unfortunately, Flynn would probably hate Julie’s call on this one, but Carrie had brought this to their attention in the first place and probably deserved to be kept in the loop.

“Are you free to meet at my house after school?”

Carrie nodded, but looked kind of surprised.

Flynn also looked surprised. And mildly horrified. Julie ignored that.

“Good. And fair warning, you’ll need to get real cool with some weird stuff real quick.”

...

Now...

“So you haven’t heard from your boyfriend at all?” Carrie asked, frowning.

Alex was pacing, which meant Julie had to pace with him so that Carlos, Carrie, and Flynn could keep seeing and hearing him.

Maybe that was for the best. She was pretty anxious, too.

“Well, Willie’s not exactly my boyfriend,” Alex mumbled, “We haven’t labeled anything. And plus, he’s risking everything every time he even sees me. That’s not—“

“Alex,” Luke said pointedly, despite the fact that half the room couldn’t hear him, “Get to the point.”

“Right. No. No, I haven’t heard from him. He said Caleb was possessing Nick and he was going to try to help him and that was it. It’s been a day. I’m getting worried. This is the first time he’s really ever stood up to Caleb openly. Who knows what could happen to him because of it?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Flynn said.

She didn’t sound very certain, but she was glancing over at Carlos like she was worried this would scare him.

Julie wasn’t that worried. She knew her little brother was tough. And that he actively sought out creepy cryptid videos on YouTube.

“I mean, he’s already dead, right?” Carlos said with a shrug, “So it’s not like he can kill him again.”

Luke raised his hand, beckoning Julie over to come and grab him so the other lifers in the room could hear him.

“No, he can’t kill him, but he can hurt him.”

“Yeah, death’s not the worst thing that can happen to a person, shockingly,” Alex muttered, the worry clear in his voice.

“Wait, what does this mean for Nick?” Carrie asked, “If Caleb’s controlling him, does that make him, like, partially dead?”

That was... that was a good point.

It was just starting to fully register that Nick was really in danger.

God, he didn’t deserve that. He was in danger and it was all because he’d gotten closer with Julie.

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted, “Willie made it sound like Caleb was... shoving him down. Like, Nick’s fighting it, but he’s losing.”

“But he’ll be okay, right?” Julie asked, “Once we figure out how to get Caleb out?”

“Willie said he’s still alive in there, and he’s okay, for now. But... but the longer he stays out of control, the harder it’ll be to get Caleb out of his head.”

Despite all the differences between them, Julie could see the same anxiety she was feeling reflected in the look Flynn and Carrie exchanged.

It had already been two weeks.

All the supernatural stuff aside, that had to be a nightmare, to be out of control of your own mind and body.

“He must be so scared in there,” Julie muttered.

“Yeah,” Reggie agreed, coming over to put a hand on her shoulder so he’d be visible, “And we lost our inside man, so we don’t even know what’s going on in there now.”

Luke smacked him upside the head, “Dude, not helping.”

“Sorry.”

Carlos perked up suddenly, which was... alarming.

Julie knew that look. It was the look he got right before he was about to say something that in all likelihood would cause trouble.

“Do you think we should call Ryan and Chad?” Carrie asked quietly.

“Oh, how would that go?” Flynn shot back, “Just, ‘sorry, your son is under the control of an evil ghost and we don’t know how to get him out?’ That’s a great thing to tell a parent.”

“How long do you think it’s going to take them to notice something’s up on their own, Flynn? Sure, Lizzie needs more attention than Nick does, but he’s still their son and it’s only a matter of time. Heck, they probably know something’s weird already and just don’t know why.”

“They probably just think he’s going through his emo phase. Why make them panic when there’s nothing they can do, anyway?”

“Wait,” Carlos said slowly, “We don’t know what’s going on in there... but what if we did?”

Carrie rolled her eyes, “Yeah, but we don’t anymore.”

“Not in the Hollywood Ghost Club,” he clarified, “In Nick’s head.”

“I applaud your out of the box thinking,” Reggie said, “But we don’t really have a way to do that.”

“We don’t. You do.”

Julie slowly started to realize what he was suggesting.

“What happens if one of you tries to go in and possess Nick while Caleb’s already in there?”

“What happens if you can drive him out?” Flynn realized, “You’d be able to just let Nick go.”

“Theoretically,” Alex admitted.

“It’s worth a try,” Carrie said hopefully.

“It’s risky,” Julie corrected, “What happens if you can’t push Caleb out? Would you just be stuck in there, too?”

Luke shrugged, “There’s no way to know... I’ll do it.”

“Whoa, Luke—“

“Reggie, we’re already dead,” Luke said firmly, “Nick’s not. He got pulled into this because of us. It’s our responsibility to get him out of it.”

“But why you specifically?” he argued, “Why—“

“Because unlike you and Alex, Nick and I have something in common.”

Julie wasn’t sure if he was talking about guitar or her.

Either way, he had a point. She didn’t like the idea of the risk, but she couldn’t see another option that possibly ended in getting everyone back.

“You said you resisted Caleb before,” she pointed out hesitantly, “Before our Orpheum performance. At least a little.”

“Yeah, exactly. Alex and Reggie, neither of you could do that. Going in to try to get Nick out, I’m the only one that stands a chance.”

They both clearly wanted to, and honestly, Julie did, too, but none of them argued.

“Willie said Nick had a chance if he ‘dug deep enough,’” Alex said quietly, “Something about needing to not hold anything back?”

Luke nodded, “I’ll tell him. And I’ll try to find out about Willie if I get the chance.”

They were all well aware how much risk this was taking, and even Carrie seemed hesitant to send Luke into it.

Still, Julie nodded as they made eye contact.

“Make sure you both come out of this.”

[helenarlett-rex]

Today while I was at work we got Willy’s Wonderland in. The new Nicolas Cage movie that is the most blatant rip-off of Five Nights at Freddy’s that could ever possibly be made.

And I’m not joking. This thing pretty much copied FNAF down to the letter with only a few, very minor changes made... Instead of a night guard, the protagonist is a night janitor. The name of the restaurant has been changed from Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to Willy’s Wonderland, instead of being haunted by the souls of dead children, the animatronics are haunted by the souls of dead cultists... Although really... the cultists were all William Afton style serial killers who ran the restaurant and used it to lure children into the back and kill them, so that part’s really not much of a change... It was just FNAF with eight William Aftons... Oh hey... The lead killer was named Willy... Willy... William... Yeah... Okay it was FNAF with two and a half details changed... I mean the lead animatronic was a weasel instead of a bear, so maybe I should say this was a Popgoes knock-off instead of a FNAF knock-off... A knock-off of a knock-off... But now that I think about it, Popgoes does take place inside the FNAF universe (unofficially) so I guess it’s still just a blatant knock-off of FNAF. But actually it’s worse than that... This is going beyond just being a knock-off. It’s theft... This movie stole FNAF and tried to pass it off as it’s own thing.

Why do I say that?

Well when the movie came across my desk this morning, I instantly knew I had to watch it. There was no way I could pass it up. But being stuck at work all day, I was going to have to wait several hours before I could get home and do that. And with nothing else to do while I waited, and being the FNAF fanatic I am... I ended up using my time at work to start a deep dive into the movie. Which led me to finding a very interesting interview with the creators of the movie, talking about the creation of the movie, and what I found was quite shocking.

Namely what I found was that the creators were giving zero credit to Scott Cawthon, or the FNAF series, for the inspiration behind this movie. Never once did they ever mention or even acknowledge that FNAF is a thing that exists. Instead they gave this convoluted back story about how they came up with the idea for this movie all on their own and actually tried to pass this off as an original idea they came up with themselves... The audacity, and downright stupidity... of this left me breathless. You are really going to rip-off FNAF... one of the most wildly popular indi game series of all time... make a movie where 90% of your audience is going to be FNAF fans... and then try to say it was your own idea and take all the credit for yourself? And you are going to do this seven years after the franchise exploded into mass popularity? Are you insane? Are you delusional? I mean this thing rips off the FNAF franchise so closely you are lucky Scott Cawthon isn’t slapping you with a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

But how was the movie itself? Well strangely enough, it was kind of fantastic...

I mean, Nicolas Cage gave his most absurd performance ever in what was possibly the most absurd movie he’s ever been in... Playing a mute drifter suckered into working one night as a janitor in a closed down pizzeria preparing for re-opening... A man with the most dedicated work ethic in the universe, an obsession with drinking fruit punch soda, playing pinball machines, always wearing a clean uniform, and always taking his scheduled breaks no matter what... To the point of actually walking out in the middle of a fight so he can go take his break... But also a man with no viable emotion who can knock a killer animatronic flat on its ass with a single punch... In other words its Nicolas Cage being weird as fuck for no apparent reason... as we expect of him...

But somehow the absurdity of Cage’s character managed to provide the most faithful adaptation of a protagonist in a FNAF game I ever could have asked for. He just got attacked by an animatronic that told him it wanted to eat his flesh right before it tried to kill him... and as soon as he was done destroying it he just goes right back to work as if nothing even happened... That’s a FNAF game in a nutshell... Again... From people who are giving no credit to FNAF and trying to pass this off as their own idea... But even if they don’t want to admit it, they nailed FNAF perfectly. Even cage walking away in the middle of a fight to go drink fruit punch and play pinball because it was break time was reminiscent of how the moment the clock strikes 6:00 AM in the games and your shift ends everything just stops and you go home. Foxy could be right outside banging on your door, trying to get in, but if it’s 6:00 AM you aren’t worried about that anymore. You’re not on the clock.

Even Cage’s character being mute could be seen as a reference to how the protagonists in a FNAF game never talk...

You would think someone making such a perfect satirical analogy of FNAF would at least give some kind of credit to the source material they were spoofing...

But not even a mention in the special thanks... But why should they thank Scott Cawthon? They obviously don’t know he exists. This is their own idea they came up with on their own based on some restaurant they went to that used to exist in Las Vegas... They’ve never heard of FNAF before...

They credited their Sound Mixer as Mike Schmidt, but they’ve never heard of FNAF before. They came up with this idea on their own...

One of the animatronics in the movie was changed last minute to be an alligator, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this movie coinciding with the release of the new FNAF game, which is also introducing a new alligator animatronic... Of course not... How could it when they’ve never heard of FNAF? No no no... That was just Nick’s idea because he really likes reptiles...

Hell... Even in the “making of” special feature they’ve got Nicolas Cage sitting there saying that when he read the script he thought it was very original and the director sitting there talking about how unique the script was... It was carbon copy of FNAF with two minor details changed, but it was so unique and original... Fuck me! You aren’t even the first movie to knock-off FNAF! The Banana Splits Movie already did this two years ago!

The movie was still great. I had a blast watching it. I almost want to say I love it. But I don’t love it when someone tries to take the credit for something they didn’t come up with... That I don’t like...

[rfamess]

This cured my boredom for a little bit. Was making a few new music playlists and thought.. hmm. I wonder what kind of music the RFA listens to? So, I made this. For no reason at all.

What Kind of Music the RFA + V/Saeran Listen To:

Saeyoung/707:

- (I always see people writing that he’d listen to all star or other cringe meme songs because that’s what seems to be his entire personality, but I like to think he has more substance than that and listens to songs that don’t have to do with memes.)

- He definitely listens to rap/hip-hop.

- Can you not imagine him driving down the road in his cars, windows down, music blasting?

- He listens to his music uber loud in his headphones while working.

- His favorite artist is probably Tyler the creator, i mean, how could you not love him.

- Listens to Mac Miller when he’s sad :(

PLAYLIST:

Who Dat Boy - Tyler the Creator

Stutter - Freddie Dredd

Evil Fantasy - Freddie Dredd

Sweatpants - Childish Gambino

Bounce - Logic

Dead Wrong - Notorious B.I.G.

Movement - Oliver Tree

Stick to Your Guns - Watsky

Both - Gucci Mane

No Sleep Till Brooklyn - Beastie Boys

Can I Kick It - A Tribe Called Quest

No Limit - G Easy

Circles - Mac Miller

Broke Bitch - TMG (lol)

Bonfire - Childish Gambino

I THINK - Tyler the Creator

Good News - Mac Miller

I - Kendrick Lamar

FACE - Brockhampton

King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar

Lovely Things Suite: Knots - Watsky

Zen:

- (Similar to Saeyoung, I don’t believe Zens entire personality revolves around musicals, he probably doesn’t listen to them that often imo.)

- I like to think he’s a... well rounded individual when it comes to music

- Listens to anything and everything.

- I could see him listening to the same music as Seven, but is also very into 70s-90s rock like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the like.

- He runs listening to all of his music on shuffle and doesn’t have a specific playlist so there’s never a certain vibe to it— it really is all over the place.

- In addition to Seven’s playlist, here’s Zen’s

PLAYLIST:

Funny Face - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Santeria - Sublime

Badfish - Sublime

The Luck You Got - The High Strung

Dedicated to the One I Love - The Mamas and the Papas

Heart of Glass - Blondie

Come as You Are - Nirvana

Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison

Machu Picchu - The Strokes

Dirty Harry - Gorillaz

Love of Your Life - Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Adults Are Talking - The Strokes

Bailee - The Licks

Where is my Mind - Pixies

Hurt Like Mine - The Black Keys

Gap - The Kooks

Give it Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand

Hoops - The Rubens

Conquest - The White Stripes

Ten Cent Pistol - The Black Keys

Yoosung:

- Yoosung likes more upbeat music, maybe more new age/alternative pop

- Listens to music every time he tries to study, but usually get distracted by it and starts to sing along instead of actually doing his work

- Is probably trying to branch out of his style, Seven and Zen try to convince him to listen to their favorite genres

- The three of them always argue about who has the best taste in music lol

- He’s constantly wondering if his music is “manly” enough (it’s okay yoosung it’s just music)

- If this dude gets drunk and hears any of this music he goes absolutely wild and dances all over the place

PLAYLIST:

Bambi - Hippocampus

Turn - the Wombats

Paris - Magic Man

Chronic Sunshine - Cosmo Pike

Death of a Bachelor - Panic! At the Disco

Silvertongue - Young the Giant

Brazil - Declan McKenna

Unbelievers - Vampire Weekend

Baseball - Hippocampus

Australia - The Shins

Prune, You Talk Funny - Gus Dapperton

Honeypie - JAWNY

Alien Boy - Oliver Tree

Satellite - Guster

So Young - Portugal. The Man

Blinding Lights - The Weeknd

Circles - Post Malone

Unbearably White - Vampire Weekend

Tiny Umbrella - Coast Modern

Way it Goes - Hippocampus

Electric Feel - MGMT

Jumin:

- this guy has 2 modes and that’s it: classical bitch or music that has words

- He appreciates the fine art of classical music and listens to it when he has work to get done or when he’s trying to relax.

- If he’s in a good mood he’ll put on a playlist that includes “music with actual lyrics!”

- It’s a dad playlist. Billy Joel, Billy Joel, Billy Joel, Elton John, The Beatles, Billy Joel.

- He likes Billy Joel. Jumin has a dad personality you can’t convince me otherwise lol

- He tried to branch out but can get very picky in his interests. “I don’t like this guitar riff— change it”

- Either way his 2 modes are apparent in his playlists

PLAYLIST:

Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

California Dreamin’ - The Mamas and the Papas

Don’t Ask Me Why - Billy Joel

Starman - David Bowie

Miss You - The Rolling Stones

Dancing in the Moonlight - King Harvest

Come and Get Your Love - Redbone

It’s Too Late - Carole King

Movin’ Out - Billy Joel

A Horse With No Name - America

I Want to Hold Your Hand - The Beatles

Honky Cat - Elton John

Vienna - Billy Joel

The Stranger - Billy Joel

Waltz in A Minor - Chopin

Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G Minor - Brahms

Waltz No. 7 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2 - Chopin

Souvenir de Paganini - Chopin

Solfeggietto in C Minor - Bach

Prelude in B Minor, Op. 32, No. 10 - Rachmaninoff

IV. Allegro Molto From Quartet - Yo-Yo Ma

La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin - Debussy

Porz Goret - Yann Tiersen

Carnival of the Animals: VII. Aquarium - Camille Saint-Saëns

Carnival of the Animals: XIII. The Swan - Camille Saint-Saëns

Jaehee:

- We all know her obsession with Musicals (specifically zens)

- Other than this she listens to...well honestly I don’t know

- Her music doubles as something she can get hyped up with and something she can listen to to relax.

- She loves to dance, so a lot of her songs and just songs that she’ll never be able to refuse to move her feet to!

- She likes the old classics and then she likes Doja Cat. Lizzo? Queen.

- She’s a barb let’s be real please. you can never convince me that she’s not

PLAYLIST:

Adore You - Harry Styles

She - Harry Styles

Call Me - Blondie

Starships - Nicki Minaj

Hey Mickey - Toni Basil

Juice - Lizzo

Say So - Doja Cat

Voulez-Vous - ABBA

Waterloo - ABBA

Cuz I Love You - Lizzo

Killing Me Softly With His Song - Roberta Flack (LOL the memories associated with this song after Killing Stalking..... hahahaha BUT ITS STILL A GREAT SONG!)

Only - Nicki Minaj

Boss Bitch - Doja Cat

Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac

Beez in the Trap - Nicki Minaj

Woman - Harry Styles

9 to 5 - Dolly Parton

Blame it on the Boogie - Michael Jackson

One Way or Another - Blondie

Tia Tamera - Doja Cat

Truth Hurts - Lizzo

V:

- indie boy indie boy indie boy indie boy

- Cmon just look at him he’s an indie boy

- If you’ve ever met a film student that gatekeeps music, they have the same exact taste but V won’t say shit to make you feel stupid. It’s just music bruv

- If you’ve ever been to an indie concert you know the fuckin dance you know what I’m talking about. he does that.

- Rolls a joint, pops the music off and he paints, does photography, whatever. Either way he straight vibes every single time the tunes come on.

- Low key thinks he has the best music taste. that’s just how dem indie kids roll let’s be real here.

- For some reason knows everything about every type of music. will spew facts about artists and songs at random

PLAYLIST:

Shuggie - Foxygen

Necessary Evil - Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Homage - Mild High Club

Another One - Mac DeMarco

Plants - Crumb

What Once Was - Her’s

Heart and My Car - Summer Salt

Cottage Roads - The Walters

Moonlight on the River - Mac DeMarco

Work This Time - King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

Like Yesterday - Paul Cherry

Call it Fate, Call it Karma - The Strokes

Knowhere - Nick DeLaurentis

Escargot Blues - Guantánamo Bay Surf Club

A Side / B Side - Tipling Rock

Dark Red - Steve Lacy

That I Miss You - Vansire

Top Tier Love - Lonely Benson

Driving to Hawaii - Summer Salt

Taking Up Space - Mustard Service

She’s the Only One - King Guru

Saeran:

- emo boy emo boy emo boy

- We all know it

- As much as I’d love to say he listens to heavy death metal, there’s a part of my mind saying NO he’s not like that.

- Well he is, but he’s got more than a few single interest

- Probably listens to Nirvana, Cage the Elephant, anything similar

- Is always trying to listen to new music

- Kind of sick of Seven blasting his music all the time and listens to the opposite of hip hop whenever possible

- Honestly enjoys all types of music, but sticks to his favorites

PLAYLIST:

- All Apologies - Nirvana

- Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene - Hozier

- Soma - The Strokes

- Black Madonna - Cage the Elephant

- Hysteria - Muse

- Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High - Arctic Monkeys

- I Got Mine - The Black Keys

- Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

- Under the Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers

- Back Against the Wall - Cage the Elephant

- Creep - Radiohead

- Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana

- Demon Days - Gorillaz

- Bulls on Parade - Rage Against The Machine

- Matador - The Buttertones

- Holiday - Green Day

- RIP - The Licks

- London Calling - The Clash

- Loser - Beck

- What I Got - Sublime

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week - 37

Robert Bresson’s philosophical Pickpocket, inspired both by Raskolnikov from ‘Crime and Punishment’ and by Camus ‘The Stranger’. And in turn it inspired Paul Schrader, the other conflicted Christian filmmaker. Austere and mysterious.

✴️        

And so 3 by Paul Schrader (all starring Willem Dafoe):

✳️✳️✳️ The Card Counter, Schrader’s new masterpiece. A tortured soul seeking redemption in a ‘ballet of violence’, just like in many of his previous films. The part of the torture program in Abu Ghraib is tailored a bit too close to the real Mitchell / Jessen psychopaths. But OK.  8+ / 10

✳️✳️✳️ Affliction, a completely different set up: Nick Nolte’s turns into his drunk, abusive father in a cold New Hampshire winter. A sad story of how a family curse is passed through generations, without redemption. His poor daughter...

✳️✳️✳️ Auto Focus, atypical light Schrader pastiche about murdered actor Bob Crane’s friendship with John Henry Carpenter. Crane’s sexual obsession must have been the appeal to Schrader. Told as an uncanny pastel joke, that hides a dark and disturbed core.

✴️           

First watch: Sergei Parajanov’s homoerotic The Color of Pomegranates (1969), a stunning visual poem of nearly-ethnographic Armenian tableaux. Reminds me of Jodorowsky. The inspiration to Tarsem’s music video for R.E.M.'s ‘Losing My Religion’.

(Photo above) 

✴️       

In 1965-66 American-backed anti-communist militias tortured and executed up to a million ‘enemies of the state’ in mass killings in Indonesia.

The Act of Killing is a 2012 terrifying Danish documentary where a group of these now-old death-squad leaders recreate and reenact their actions from that time.

Indonesia, it seems, is not a very enlightened country.

The most original film of the week.

✴️        

Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, a privileged father-daughter drama. A new superstar actor lives at the Chateau Marmont, and spends some time with his 11 year old daughter. Contemplative with Coppola’s usual slow, long shots style, but pointless and bland. The parent-daughter part was OK, but the Hollywood-fame portion was uninteresting. Even the hot pole-dancing Playboy twins were not exiting.

✴️        

“Ah, the smell of goulash!”

First watch: Lubitsch’s That uncertain feeling, 1941 erotic comedy, full of sexual innuendos and double entendres that the Hays Code didn’t catch.

“Phooy!”

✴️          

Truffaut’s 4th film, The Soft Skin, with Catherine Deneuve’s dead sister, Françoise Dorléac. A married man falls in love with a young stewardess. After 3 New Wave originals, this was derided as a “bourgeois melodrama” and was a commercial failure.  

Always with Georges Delerue’s music.

✴️      

Orson Welles’s existentialist The Trial, based on Kafka’s novel. Starring unconvincing and too young-looking Anthony Perkins as a man accused of a crime he didn’t commit and which he doesn’t understand. Also with Jeanne Moreau. One literary bad dream with lots of absurdist going-ons. It all hinges on K’s feelings of guilt.

✴️        

A different kind of  a bad dream, the ultimate Orange County, CA very black “comedy” Very Bad Things. Like ‘The Hangover’, but worst-case-scenario bad.

✴️        

Recommended by my mom:

The Hundred Foot Journey, a predictable restaurant-porn about the second Michelin star in a “little, quaint French village”. By Lasse Hallström, who specializes in this kind of international fairy tales, and Oprah Winfrey. Commercial clichés and stereotypical tropes. 2/10

✴️        

"You're a cookie full of arsenic"...

Sweet Smell of Success - 2 slimy operators, “publicist” Tony Curtis and influential gossip columnist Burt Lancaster unethically conspire to destroy a jazz musician in a gritty Manhattan Noir. Another sizzling Ernest Lehman manuscript.

✴️      

Barry Levinson paid tribute to ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ in his debut feature Diner, with one of the kids wandering around saying nothing but lines from the film. So I watched it again. What a wonderful piece of triple nostalgia (1959-1982-2021). Perfect in every sense, especially when showing unexpected sides to each character: Boogie doing hair, Billy playing the piano, Eddie dancing at the strip club.

“You’re gonna finish this?”

Best film of the week!

✴️         

Best Sellers, the new Michael Caine vehicle. He’s a cranky, washed-up, bitter author, who’s drunk the whole time. His orange cat is the only other good thing in this lame “comedy”. With a horrible Aubrey Plaza. 2/10

✴️        

2 X Vanya’s:

✳️✳️✳️ The 2020 British stage adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, with Toby Jones as Vanya, and Roger Allam as the professor. It deals with purposeful life, beauty, money, and one of the first discussions of ecological problems in world literature.

✳️✳️✳️ I’m glad I waited to watch Louis Malle’s last film, Vanya on 42nd Street, after the BBC version. Even though it was filmed 26 years earlier, it was much more contemporary. The combined talents of David Mamet, Andre Gregory and Malle modernized the play into a brilliant whole. Wallace Shawn was great! 8/10

✴️        

Chaplin’s delightful 1922 Pay Day, first (?) tramp film where he has a (nasty, harping) wife.

✴️     

U Turn, Oliver Stone’s sadistic, disgusting and pointless mess. Sean Penn is a permanently unlucky schmuck, who “pulls up to a tiny no place in the Arizona desert”. Bad Tarantino clone.

Thanks a lot for the recommendation, Sammy! 1/10

✴️        

Because Norm Macdonald died today, I watched his Dirty Work. A grave mistake! His dry humor was good for a few sardonic one liners, but not for this stupid, sophomoric loser. 0/10

✴️      

42 enjoyable minutes of a crash course on fromage, how to cut it and how to serve it.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

[sorrelchestnut]

from the discard pile: dogs of war, sole & deacon

Going through some drafts and unearthed this bit, which I think was originally meant to be the closing scene of Jeepers Creepers before I decided the pacing was off.  The lead-in to the scene is missing but they’re in Sole’s garage in Sanctuary, talking about X6, who is outside with MacCready. (Content warning for mentions of past war crimes, including torture and execution.)

"Don't worry, he can't hear us," Sole says, catching the line of his gaze.  "This garage is soundproof - only way I got some goddamn peace on the weekends.  His hearing might reach, on a quiet day, but he can only process one auditory input at a time.  As long as you don't use his name, or any words that might trigger his attention, you're fine."

"You're sure of that?"

"I've read approximately six hundred pages of reports to that effect, so yes."  And then she grins at him, easy and loose.  "Also, Mac and I tested it.  Extensively."

Deacon trembles to think what form that 'testing' might have taken.  The two of them hold the current Railroad record for goading Carrington into a temper: one minute and forty-two seconds, and they weren't even talking directly to him.  Deacon's own best time is barely under three.

"It's a miracle you're still alive."

"Nah.  Not really."  And her gaze wanders once more to the door, something like fondness tugging once more at the corner of her mouth.

Worry churns in his gut: not new, exactly, but… renewed, maybe.  He trusts her judgement, in the general sense, but she's also possessive about her people, and that can lead to mistakes.  "You like him, don't you?"

"First time I met him he took down an entire Brotherhood squad in less than five minutes.  What's not to like?"

Deacon brushes that away with a gesture.  "No, I mean you actually like him."

Most people fidget when they're thinking: their gazes roam, they bounce their knees, they bite their nails, something.  (Dez rubs her fingers together, like she's holding a cigarette; Carrington folds his hands.  Glory taps her belt buckle.  Drums tugs at his sleeves.)  Fixer, on the other hand, goes completely still.  It's how he figured out that her first training was as a sniper, even if she tends towards more direct solutions these days.  MacCready has it, too, as much as Deacon hates to admit it.  When the chips are down, they both have that instinct to wait, and take a breath, before they decide.

He doesn't know about X6-88.  As far as Deacon can tell, he's always absolutely still.  Right up until the moment he's not.

"I understand him," Fixer says finally.  "The best of the best, with a broad mandate and minimal oversight, answerable only to the highest authorities…  Hell, I've been him.  I don't think they really knew what they were doing, when they started making soldiers like him.  They don't understand how they think."

The pronouns are a little confusing, but he gets what she's saying, since she can't use words like Institute or courser with X6 so close at hand.  "They don't think they can."

She tips her head in acknowledgement.  "The army didn't, either, back in my day.  It's not really what soldiers are known for.  But that's how I know."

"Know what, Fix?"

"How it happens."  She's not really looking at him; her gaze is fixed broodingly into the middle distance, on some foreign land that's been dead so long Deacon can't even really imagine it.  "You give someone that kind of latitude, they're going to use it.  It's inevitable.  Doesn't mean they kick up, doesn't mean they're not still following orders, just-  It's a choice.  Every day."

"And you think his choices-"  The Institute, he tries to say without saying it; all of the synths he's dragged back to slavery, all of the people he's killed-  "-mean you can trust him."

She grins at that, shooting him a sideways look that would probably seem almost flirtatious, if he didn't know that she'd put a blade through his throat before she'd let him touch her.  "He has a standing kill order on Mac, you know."

Deacon almost spits out his cigarette.  "What?"

"Yeah.  Since day one.  The, uh, big boss, really doesn't like me having outside ties."  She shrugs, seemingly entirely unmoved by the prospect.  "I'm not worried.  He's more than half in love with him, you know."

More pronouns.  "You mean MacCready, or…"

"Or."  She smirks at his surprise.  "Hey, just because you don't like my boy, doesn't mean it's a common affliction."

"I think you'll find you're the odd one out there, Fix."

But Deacon can't help but look through the door, out to the two figures in the garden beyond.  At some point in the past couple minutes, MacCready successfully coaxed X6 away from his guard post and down into the garden next to him, kneeling with little regard for his shiny-black coat.  Which would be startling enough, but as Deacon watches, MacCready knocks lazily against him with one shoulder, seemingly unconcerned with reprisal.  X6, after a moment's deliberation, expressionlessly returns the gesture, seemingly no harder than a shrug but enough to send MacCready tumbling into the dirt.

There's a cry of offense, loud enough to be heard even through the door, and then MacCready is popping back up like some demented jack-in-the-box, trying and failing to fix a scowl on his smiling mouth.  X6-88 waits patiently until his diatribe is done, then says something in reply, his face still fixed in that absolutely blank affect.  Whatever it is tips the battle between smile and scowl, and MacCready loses it, his head thrown back in a silent shout of laughter.

The angle of X6's head changes very slightly, as if he's looking at the long, exposed line of MacCready's throat.  And then he turns away, and goes back to his task.

"You see," Fixer says, very quietly, next to him.

"Holy shit," Deacon breathes.  "How long have you-"

"Suspected?  Early.  First mission, practically.  Known?"  She shrugs again.  "Baited him when we hit Med-Tek.  Gave him a chance to make his move - lots of ghouls, no witnesses, MacCready was freaking out.  All he had to do was step back, but he turned them into fucking paste.  Never saw him move so fast.  So."

He looks at her sidelong, trying to judge how she feels about it.  "Never saw you as the type to share your toys, Fix."

A twitch of a smile.  "You don't know everything about me, Deacon."

No.  But he does know a lot.  "So it's as simple as that, huh?  He's hot for your boy, so you trust him?"

That earns him a cool frown.  "I don't trust anybody.  Except MacCready," she corrects judiciously.  "And Preston.  Sturges.  Nick, most days.  Everyone else?"  She shrugs.  "It's situational."

Deacon’s a very pointed absence from that list, but hell.  It's not like she's wrong.  They understand each other too well to be offended over a little thing like honesty at this late date.  "But considering the situation-"

She makes an exasperated noise at the back of her throat.  "Do I trust him not to kill my partner?  Yeah.  Do I know that I might still have to kill him someday?  Also yeah.  Do I think there's a chance I won't have to?  Yeah.  Yeah, I do."  She scrubs a hand through her shaggy hair and pulls off her shades, giving him a clear look at the shadows underneath her eyes.  There's a twang of guilt, faint but still there: she's been burning the candle at both ends, trying to keep this crazy train afloat.  "Look, you think it's easy to make that kind of judgement call?  You think it's all black and white?  It's not.  I've probably killed more people than anyone downstairs, and I think you know that."

Her voice is still soft, not a whisper but a low, easy murmur, designed not to draw attention from the sharp ears outside.  And it takes everything Deacon has to keep his voice equally low when he says, "It's not really the same thing."

"Isn't it?"  She meets his gaze head-on.  "Whatever you've imagined I've done, let me tell you - it was ten times worse.  I've tortured people for information; I've tortured people to send a message.  I've killed civilians.  I've killed prisoners.  I've killed people who were starving, desperate, begging - sometimes, I killed people just because they got in my way.  And you know what?  You're still perfectly happy to make use of me.  So maybe, just maybe, we're neither of us qualified to determine whether or not someone is irredeemable."

For a minute Deacon can't say anything, can't even think past the roaring in his ears.  Sole just waits, with that same still patience she has in the field, the crack of the rifle shot still ringing in the air as she waits to see if her target's going to get up again.  They never do, of course.  Fixer's too thorough for that: two to the heart, one to the head, that's her style.

He wonders, for a long and aching moment, if she already knows.  And in the moment that follows that one, he realizes it doesn't matter.  He's going to tell her someday, anyway.  Who else could possibly understand?

And in the moment after that, he meets her gaze, nods, and returns to business.

"We're ahead of schedule on the upper-level builds, but the labs are slower going.  I think once your new friend starts getting her robots up and running we'll be able to shift more people away to the specialized work in the lower levels, and we'll be back on track for the deadline.  Plumbing's been going well, but the wiring is still something of an issue…"

[umaficwriter]

Hey guys! I updated my Kalijah playlist and below there’s a explanation for why this songs were chosen. Enjoy! Xx

Enchanted (Taylor Swift) - they feeling Katerina had when she first met Elijah

Dancing With Our Hands Tied (Taylor Swift) - the sensation creeping in that they wanted to be together, although there was something in the way, still their stolen moments made them not give up

Give Me Love (Ed Sheehan) - Elijah tries to keep Katerina interested in him instead of his brother, even though he knows the reason she’s there and that they can’t be fully together, still he wants her to fancy him, not Niklaus.

Mercy (Shawn Mendes) - Elijah já overwhelmed by her presence, he tries to deny it and escape her presence with no success.

hostage (Billie Eilish) - Katerina is bestowed to Klaus, although all she wanted was for Elijah to take her away

Run Away (Cary Brothers) - Elijah discovers Katerina flew. He can’t blame her. He fears for her safety and is broken that another attempt in love of his went wrong.

Decode (Paramore) - now Katerina understands why Klaus always had blood on him without ever being hurt, why Elijah had such an odd behavior. They’re vampires.

Find You (Nick Jonas) - Elijah starts looking at Katerina around the world. He knows he has to take her to his brother, although he also knows that once he does find her, he won’t.

Fool’s Gold (Niall Hiram) - with every day that passes, Elijah is closer to the conclusion he won’t find her unless she wants too. Still, he doesn’t let any stone interned. He’s a fool for her.

In My Veins (Andrew Belle) - they can’t escape each other. Elijah was always close to her, no matter where she went. It was like running from your shadow.

How You Remibd Me (Nickelback) - he sees her once. She’s so close, he could smell her, almost feel her skin, she’s nothing but pure sin now. Katherine Pierce was her name now. He was in love with the devil, after all.

Take Me To Church (Hozier) - she lets him approach her. He asks the Gods he believes in to save his soul when his brother finds out. She was his downfall.

Bend the Rules (Niall Hiram) - she does not stay for long. For she knows Klaus is gonna find out about them. She doesn’t want Elijah to suffer his wrath, so she flees.

Just In Love (Joe Jonas) - Elijah ia willing to sacrifice his family for her. He does not though.

Gravity (Sara Bareilles) - they gravitate to one another again, for a short time though.

Only Forever (Demi Lovato) - he’s gonna wait for her, only forever.

Tomorrow Never Came (Lana Del Rey) - she wants to run with him again. She’s doesn’t.

Cruel Summer (Taylor Swift) - they have their last summer together before the end.

august (Taylor Swift) - Katerina arrives in Mystic Falls, without knowing that Elijah kept tabs on her. Turns out, she falls in love with the Salvatore brothers, alluding them to believe she’s good for them. Maybe they weren’t meant to be.

The Last Time (Taylor Swift) - its the last time he tries and reaches for her. She does not choose him.

Stuck (Imagine Dragons) - he goes and tries to find a replacement for her. He cannot.

Meet Me In The Hallway (Harry Styles) - both try not to compare their parters to one another. They caught themselves thinking about their relationship multiple times.

exile (Taylor Swift) - Elijah receives word of her playing with the Salvatore. He feels sad for them, although jealous, because he wasn’t the one holding her attention.

Arms or a Stranger (Niall Horan) - he sees her with the brothers. He feels stupid for still Cary such feelings for this façade.

Cherry (Harry Styles) - Elijah knows is foolish this sentiment of possession he has for her, still he selfishly cultivates it.

Jealous (Nick Jonas) - why would Katerina want this humans? These projects or men, when she could have him?

Dancing With a Stranger (Sam Smith) - they blame each other for their current relationship situation.

From the Dinning Table (Harry Styles) - Elijah nurses the possibility of her coming back into his arms.

Everywhere (Niall Hiram) - he receives word of her death and shuts off every emotion towards her that was still left. Although, everywhere he goes, he sees her.

Chainsaw (Nick Jonas) - he wants to forget everything they had. He hates the places they’ve been together.

Almost (DNCE) - he contemplates what he could’ve done differently. They were an immense amount of “what if’s”

Let Me Go (3 Doors Down) - he finds out she’s alive after all. She faked her own death. Elijah is livid. He wants vengeance.

What A Time (Julia Michaels) - he comes to conclusion all they have lived was a beautiful lie. One only he believed in.

I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (ZAYN) - they almost stumble on each other. Life seems to make no sense if they’re not close.

False God (Taylor Swift) - he tried to rescue her from herself. Elena tells him his brother has Katerina. His plotting something to free her. He still loves her. Stupid.

All I Want (Kodaline) - Katherine thinks Elijah is still daggared. And when he wakes up, he thinks she’s dead.

Set Fire to The Third Bar (Snow Patrol) - they start to look for each other again, in spite the terrible odds for them to stay together this time again.

My Heart Will Go On (Celine Dion) - they still have issues they need to attend to before being together.

Treacherous (Taylor Swift) - the familiarity is still there, but they need to be careful regarding their hearts.

Don’t Forget (Demi Lovato) - there’s a cure and they almost spilt up again regarding it.

Call It What You Want (Taylor Swift) - everyone knows they’re together now. Call if whatever. Katherine and Elijah are a thing!

You And Me (Niall Horan) - they take a time away to contemplate their relationship.

Delicate (Taylor Swift) - Elena informs him that Katherine killed Jeremy. Her reputation have never been worse, still he stands with her, in spite of his brain telling him not to.

Hands to Myself (Selena Gomez) - Katherine plans to show Elijah why he’s the luckiest man to have her all to himself.

Wildest Dreams (Taylor Swift) - they have a getaway. She can’t believe she’s with him again.

I Know Places (Taylor Swift) - they have to hide in order to be together.

Getaway Car (Taylor Swift) - they have to part ways again. Or at least, pretend.

I Think He Knows (Taylor Swift) - Katherine assumes Elijah knows everything that runs in that pretty little head or hers. And when he doesn’t, he’ll discover in the most delicious way possible.

I Love You (Little Mix) - she tells him.

Afterglow (Taylor Swift) - she can’t handle him going back to his brother again. But she can’t see him down either.

This Love (Taylor Swift) - once again they decide it’s better ifcthwy part ways. He kisses her forehead and she watches him leave.

Holding Us Back (Katie Herzig) - maybe they weren’t meant to be after all. There was always something holding them back. Maybe she just liked the song of “I love you” when said to him.

Battlefield (Lea Michele) - they keep hurting each other even though they love each other. It’s like q war they’ll never win.

this is me trying (Taylor Swift) - Katherine is human. And even though she knows going to NOLA is walking into the Lion’s den, she has to look Elijah in the eye and ask him for them to try again.

Why (Shawn Mendes) - she’s his disease.

Love Me Or Leave Me (Little Mix) - he tells her it’s complicated and that he can’t, not right now.

Stay (Gabrielle Aplin) - so she’s going away.

Who Knew (P!nk) - she was such a full for believing he would help her now she was human. Living him was her greatest mistake.

I Have Questiona (Camila Cabello) - although, she would not leave without a conversation. He would listen to what she had to say.

All too Well (Taylor Swift) - she felt like a crumpled piece of paper. Seemed like she wasn’t important enough. Stupid human emotions.

Between the Lines (Sara Bareilles) - Katherine saw the way Hayley looked at him. We’re they an item? Oh foolish Katerina, it appears like ‘Lijah is over you, came Klaus grin as he inserted the needle in her vein.

Don’t Make me Choose (Nick Jonas) - he just wanted Katerina to understand that although she was priority in his life, family was always and forever.

Dress (Taylor Swift) - they have no idea about them. Nor Klaus, nor Marcel or Hayley, not even the witches. She would die to keep them in secret. He would too.

Slow Dancing in a Burnibg Room (John Mayer) - and when they do find out, they take bets on how long’s gonna last.

Don’t Blame Me (Taylor Swift) - even though human, she kills for him, for his family. She’s one of them now.

Cross Your Mind (Niall Horan) - she wants him to turn her. He won’t budge his strong opinion against it.

See no More (Joe Jonas) - Elijah should’ve known Katherine Pierce would strike again.

Rare (Selena Gomez) - she thought she meant more for him than that.

Oceans (Seafret) - they’re distant.

Too Good At Goodbyes (Sam Smith) - “we say goodbye so many times around, Katerina, that it doesn’t surprise me anymore, nor hurt me that much.I’m numb.” The look on her face is uterly hurt.

the 1 (Taylor Swift) - she leaves him.

Say Somwthing (A Great Big World) - otavthwir ultimatum.

Samson (Regina Spektor) - she was his weakness. She explored her knowledge of him in all the ways she knew of. She’d hurt him. He has her as well.

hoax (Taylor Swift) - their love was their hoax. No other sadness in the world would do.

Poison & Wine (The Civil Wars) - “I don’t love you, but I always will”

Young and Beautiful (Lana Del Rey) - she confronts him on why he doesn’t want to turn her. “Will you still love me, when I’m not young and beautiful anymore, Elijah?”

Goodbye (Avril Lavigne) - she dies in his arms. Without knowing if she’ll come back as a vampire.

Make It Without You (Andrew Belle) - Elijah does not think she’ll come back anymore. So he asks for the witches help.

The Night We Met (Lord Huron) - things were so much esier back when they first met. Because now he had none of her.

Never Let me Go (Florence & The Machine) - Katerina wakes up as a vampire again after days. Elijah promises he will never let her go.

Be my Queen (Seafret) - Klaus can be king all he wants. The Queen of Elijah’s kingdom was Katerina Petrova.

Forever And a Night (Little Big Town) - they wanted to be together forever and always. Armors down.

Daylight (Taylor Swift) - “And I can still see it all in my mind, all of you, all of me intertwined”

Fine Line (Harry Styles) - they were going to be alright.

For Katherine and Elijah

With love: umaficwriter